Take a cockroach for example! They already run fast and are difficult to kill, but now imagine it was the size of a rhino! Theye'd probably run faster than almost any sports car, and theye'd be strong enough to go about wrecking buildings and the like! And you'd probably need a heavy machine gun or rocket launcher to kill it effectively!
But now let's say rhinos were the size of bettles, they probably wouldn't last more than a week against other bugs!
Why is that? Anyone know? Thanks!
2007-08-07 11:45:06 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Zoology
The problem is the way that people speculate what small things would be like if they were bigger. They use an oversimplified way of "calculating" different sizes. Concerning strength it is force per unit area that can be scaled. This can be measured in PSI or Pascals.
Lets say a 30mm bug were re sized to 3 meters. This is 100 times larger by a linear measurement. Its muscle area increases by a factor of 10,000 and with the stress the same(a characteristic of the material) the force is also 10,000 times as much. But his weight has increased by a factor of 1,000,000. This beast now has to work 100 times harder just to manipulate its own body weight. A rhino would smash such a cockroach to bits.
2007-08-07 12:02:28 · answer #1 · answered by Roy E 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
survival of the fittest. the cockroaches exoskeleton and sleek design (no im not a car salesman) make it suitable for the 'bug's life.' a rhino is more than able to survive in the macroscopic world, but if its environment changed that much, it wouldnt stand a chance. the animals are just better suited to the environments they live in. and if you say that a cockroach would live longer/be more successful/hunt for food more easily if it were the size of a rhino, thats not true. a cockroach has no lungs, it gets it air from thousands of capillary-like tubes running through its body, sending oxygen and carbon dioxide to where the cockroach wants them. if it were the size of a car, then it would take too much effort to move the air (it moves by diffusing) and would suffocate.
simple answer: the cockroach and other insects are better suited to the environment they live in
2007-08-07 11:55:19 · answer #2 · answered by Fundamenta- list Militant Atheist 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually this is not so. You can't scale up something and it still have all the strength it had when little. Take a child's toy car. You can step on it with the force of 100 times it's weight and it will not break but scale it up to the size of a real car and it won't support 2 times its weight. The smaller an object is the greater the strength to weight ratio. Look at a blue whale, it is so large that it cannot even support its own weight, it uses water for support.
2007-08-07 11:57:25 · answer #3 · answered by DaveSFV 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
the best answer to cover beetles and cockroaches is : EXOSKELETONS....you remember the movie where some space gal fought a lizard type and she was in a heavy duty mover built like a human exoskeleton?anyway according to my biology courses, warm blooded animals have the inside skeletons in order to carry more weight, and some animals still live in water to support the wight...if an a creature with a exoskeleton's as large as a rhino, it would probably weigh several tonnes.....
2007-08-07 12:02:22 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋