When put in a sealed room together, who would suffocate first, an elephant, or a mouse?

Question

Say you have a room, the dimensions are 20’ x 20’ x 20’. Inside of it you put an elephant and a mouse. You then seal the room, airtight. Which one would suffocate first? Assume that they mouse and elephant do not interact in any way, e.g. the elephant does not lie down and crush the mouse. They are also not expending too much energy, as in running around the enclosed space. Since the mouse has smaller lungs, will it die first, not being able to draw in as much oxygen as the elephant? Or will the elephant go first, since it requires much more oxygen than the mouse? Are there more factors here at work? Will they die at the same time? By the way, this is purely theoretical, I wish no harm to neither mice nor elephants.

Answer 1

Oxygen usage of elephants and mice have been studied. Here's a very relevant quote (link 1):

"At rest, each gram of tissue of the largest land animal, the African elephant, consumes metabolic energy at 1/20 the rate of a mouse..."

So yes, both the elephant and mouse are using up the same oxygen, but when it runs out, whatever stores the elephant has will last about twenty times longer than those of the mouse.

Further, because the elephant has a HUGE volume and a proportionally smaller mouth, it's not a stretch to believe that it has a much larger internal store of oxygen then the mouse does to begin with.

So not only does the elephant's cells use oxygen at a lower rate, when the oxygen in the room runs out they'll have more available to them. I'd say the elephant wins hands down.

Which is generally in keeping with r and k strategy too - mice aren't generally designed to survive hardship... they're designed to reproduce a zillion times so any particular hardship is likely to spare a mouse or two. Elephants, on the other hand, DO have to survive because it just takes so much longer to get new elephants.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Interesting question...

The ventilation rate of the mouse is much faster than that of the elephant, although each breath the elephant takes is many times that of the mouse's. Hence the elephant would take up more of the oxygen than the mouse could.

However, the elephant would have a greater store of myoglobin oxygen, that is oxygen bonded to myoglobin in the muscles which is not released until the saturation of oxygen in the blood is very low.

Based on this I think the elephant will outlast the mouse but not by much. The mouse would asphyxiate as soon as the oxygen in the air is used up (myoglobin stores are so low, they are nearly negligible), whilst the elephant may last a few more seconds as the trapped oxygen is released in a last gasp effort.

Answer 3

The Mouse would suffocate last: The elephant would pass out from lack of oxygen before the mouse. However, since the mouse requires less oxygen, it would "grasp" the last bits of oxygen that the elephant's comatose/dead body couldn't "grab". Even if they both passed out due to loss of oxygen, the elephant would die before the last bits of oxygen were expended, which would go to the mouse.

Some may argue that, once the elephant passed out, it would use less oxygen than the conscious mouse. However, the mouse would then pass out and it would drop it's oxygen need as well. The elephant would not be able to extract the last bits of oxygen from the atmosphere before it died, leaving what's left to the mouse.

Answer 4

Both would likely die at the same time. Because of diffusion, the concentration of oxygen would be equal throughout the room. Because mouse and elephant hemoglobin are very comparable, both will absorb the same relative amount of oxygen (in relation to body/lung size -- i.e. as the oxygen level decreases to, say, 80% of the normal, both animals are now taking in 80% of what they usually do in their lungs, though they are likely still getting all that they need to survive at that particlar point). Therefore, as the oxygen level decrease and the carbon dioxide increases, each is able to take in less and less oxygen in the same ratio as to what they usually get, so they would likely suffocate at the same time, seeing as how both mammals have similar metabolic reactions to oxygen defficiency.

Answer 5

Yes, interesting question, and let's hope we can only guess the answers.

My penn'orth is that the mouse will last longest. Elephants are very much nearer the limit of what mammal physiology can manage, so I think they would go over the edge first.

In fact, elephants have great trouble dissipating heat (having such a small surface area in proportion to their volume), so unless you had some very efficient cooling in your torture chamber they might well both cook long before they ran out of oxygen. (Elephants in tropical climates could not survive without the cool night to get rid of the excess heat they absorb during the day).

However, I think it's unnecessarily cruel, even as a thought experiment.

Answer 6

both will suffocate at the same time..the elephant due to its larger will need a larger amount of oxygen compaired to the mouse... as a result it quickly consumes the oxygen in the sealed room and suffocates both itself and the mouse at the same time

Answer 7

The two animals would compete for the same pool of oxygen - it wouldn't matter which one consumes more, so it would come down to the question which one can withstand lower levels of oxygen and higher levels of carbon dioxide.

To that one, I'm not sure anyone knows the answer - I doubt anyone has systematically tried to suffocate elephants.

Answer 8

The mouse dies first. Its metabolism is much faster and has a higher demand for and sensitivity to the lack of oxygen just because of this difference.