Them!

[DogmaHunter]

The largest of the prehistoric insects (with wing-spans up to 3 feet across) ... are still much smaller than what we see in SF features like "Them" ...

I didn't claim otherwise.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Dino's were made differently than insects ...

Your post that I was responding to, didn't talk about insects. It talked about "Everything in nature" and "Large scale changes in the size of living organisms".

 

[Justatruthseeker]

You aren't aware that insects used to be HUGE?
I'm talking flies the size of a human head and centipedes measuring 3 meters in length.

Then there's also dino's and stuff.
Kind of naive to think it's "impossible", while we have the evidence that demonstrates the exact opposite.

There you go, assuming that everything has always been the same.........

But I am sure of one thing. That whatever conditions that made it possible for flies to be as large as human heads no longer exists, and hence life no longer grows to those immense sizes...... We are not talking just a few, but entire epochs of huge creatures. While today we see nothing of the sort, because the conditions allowing for such no longer exist. Besides whales (sea creatures who's bulk is supported by water) elephants are the largest in existence.

 

[jayem]

Let's also remember that arthropods (which include the insect clade) grow by ecdysis. The fancy term for molting. These animals are encased in a hardened exoskeleton, or cuticle, which splits open and is shed periodically as the organism grows. And until the new cuticle hardens, the animal is generally in a low-activity or semi-dormant state. It usually must hide because it is particularly susceptible to predation. If an ant was the size of a house, after each molt you'd have this enormous, slow, nearly defenseless soft-bodied creature that would be easy picking for all sorts of predators. Even if a gigantic ant were physiologically feasible, it would have to evolve some defense mechanism in order to survive after molting.

 

[jayem]

The largest of the prehistoric insects (with wing-spans up to 3 feet across) ... are still much smaller than what we see in SF features like "Them" ...

True. I can't imagine the wingspan an insect the size of a schoolbus would need in order to fly. And how much muscle power in its legs or wings would it take just to get off the ground?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

True. I can't imagine the wingspan an insect the size of a schoolbus would need in order to fly. And how much muscle power in its legs or wings would it take just to get off the ground?

Flying things got quite large at one time.

hard to imagine something the size of a giraffe flying too.... at least in today's current conditions.... but then I am not assuming everything has always been the same.....

 

[grasping the after wind]

I saw that movie too. One night I was walking and some sprinklers automatically went off at a park and sounded just like “Them”.

Probably where they originally got the sound effect from. I also saw that movie. Starring James Whitmore if I recall correctly.

 

[AirPo]

When I was growing up, I saw the movie Them! which scared the Y2K right out of me.

I've heard that ants can't really grow that large because of some law about the square of the size means the less liklihood of survival.

Or something like that.

Would someone enlighten me please on this law?

Thanks!

In the epilogue of Antman And The Wasp, they were watching Them.

 

[Sanoy]

What about T. Rex and Brontosaurus?

I can only speak for the T-Rex. You would use the inverse square law to size up the arms.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Brontosaurus etc would have had leg bones commensurate with their size.
The point is you cannot just scale up an animal regardless - their bones would have to resize disproportionately to support the weight.
E.g. scaling a human by a factor of 10 would increase their weight a thousandfold but their leg bone bearing capacity only a hundredfold, so they would likely break their leg with their first step.

Estimated body mass 7500 kg or 16,534.67 lbs

Assuming a human increased by 10 that would be for a 180 lb man only 1,800 lbs.

This would make the average femur over 9 inches in diameter.

The femur of the above is only about 14 inches, yet supports about 100 times our mass, not 10.

Clearly scaling is not the issue, but conditions that existed then and that exist now are.... We simply "assume" things then were the same as they are now, even if E=mc^2. So depending on the energy of a system, mass can increase or decrease.

Hence we understand relativistic mass increase and we understand Einsteins principle of equivalence, and we understand the universe is increasing in acceleration...... and we understand life is generally smaller than it once was.....

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Insect oxygen delivery is via a network of dead end tracheal tubes which get increasingly inefficient with large body size, mostly due to supply to the legs. As detailed in this easy to read piece:

https://www.livescience.com/1776-bugs-huge.html

But supposedly oxygen content was also greater..... Scale a dragonfly up by a factor of 10 and you are still short of those that used to live with a wingspan of 2.5 feet. So do we now scale oxygen content up by another 40% which doesn't match our estimates?

Or do we come to the conclusion that the world then may not have been like it is today, including mass?

 

[Colter]

Dinosaurs died out because their bodies became too big relative to brain size.

 

[Kylie]

Flying things got quite large at one time.
View attachment 238093

hard to imagine something the size of a giraffe flying too.... at least in today's current conditions.... but then I am not assuming everything has always been the same.....

Given the many lightweight features of these creatures, I'm not sure why you think that flying animals of this size are impossible under current conditions.

 

[Kylie]

Dinosaurs died out because their bodies became too big relative to brain size.

There are animals alive today that have small brains in relation to their body size, just like the dinosaurs, yet they seem to be going just fine.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Dinosaurs died out because their bodies became too big relative to brain size.

No. Just... no.

 

[Colter]

"One hundred million years ago the reptilian age was drawing to a close. The dinosaurs, for all their enormous mass, were all but brainless animals, lacking the intelligence to provide sufficient food to nourish such enormous bodies. And so did these sluggish land reptiles perish in ever-increasing numbers. Henceforth, evolution will follow the growth of brains, not physical bulk, and the development of brains will characterize each succeeding epoch of animal evolution and planetary progress." UB 1955

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

"One hundred million years ago the reptilian age was drawing to a close. The dinosaurs, for all their enormous mass, were all but brainless animals, lacking the intelligence to provide sufficient food to nourish such enormous bodies. And so did these sluggish land reptiles perish in ever-increasing numbers. Henceforth, evolution will follow the growth of brains, not physical bulk, and the development of brains will characterize each succeeding epoch of animal evolution and planetary progress." UB 1955

1955? Really?

 

[AV1611VET]

1955? Really?

That's the year Mad switched from a comic book format to a magazine format.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

That's the year Mad switched from a comic book format to a magazine format.

Not... not what I was commenting on nor is it something I care about.

 

[AV1611VET]

Not... not what I was commenting on nor is it something I care about.

The ant is mentioned in Scripture, coexisting with mankind.