Cube- Square Law in Animals

[untier]

Is it possible to create an animal, which weighs over 200 lbs, that can lift things weighing 850 times its own weight like what a rhinoceros beetle can do? I've heard according to cube-square law the larger an animal are, the smaller the ratio of lifted weight to its body weight is generally. Can this barrier be overcome by some scientific methods?

Edited February 8, 2010 by untier

[CaptainPanic]

It can be overcome by engineering methods. Just look at the heavy industrial equipment that is used to move stuff.

 

If it is possible to build such technology into an animal that reproduces? I doubt it.

[Sisyphus]

That's just building the lifter out of stronger than biological materials, though. It's not "overcoming" the cube square law. If you scaled down that heavy industrial equipment, it would be able to lift more weight relative to its size.

 

Of course, you could always just take 200 pounds worth of rhinoceros beetles...

[untier]

How heavy do you think is the deadline that a natral animal can never lift things 1/2 time its own body weight however perfectly structured the animal is?

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By the way, so the spiderman is thoroughly a mythological character but a science fictional character? As he can jump so high, his legs must be bearing too much more force than the natral law allows.

[michel123456]

The cube/square law has been discovered & explained by Galileo 500 years ago. IMO the most important galileo's discovery. It is a law of nature related to the (Euclidian) space we are living in, it cannot be overcome. This law applies for animals & for human constructions in general, buildings, naval constructions, aeronautics, etc.

A generalization of this law consists on saying that the scale factor is not applicable in nature: you cannot double the scale of something without having to change its structure. Galileo's conclusion was that if you wanted to double a horse you have to increase the proportion of his legs so that he would look like ...an elephant. You can make a model of the Eiffel Tower with chop sticks in your kitchen, but you cannot make the real Eiffel tower with the same material. You can make a little ship with a piece of paper in your bath tub but you cannot build a real tanker with paper. a.s.o.

That is the reason why there are no ants big like houses, and there are no elephants small like ants.

The world we are living in is structurated.

 

I suppose that is the reason why quarks are different from electrons, atoms are different from molecules, and molecules are different from rocks, rocks from planets, and planets from galaxies, a.s.o.

 

And every time someone explains you the structure of something small like it was something big (the structure of the atom like the structure of the solar system) you can be sure at 99% it is wrong.

[untier]

Is there any material difference between human body and dinosaur body? The bones of huge dinosaurs ware diamond formed from the high pressure of their weight? Or else wouldn't they have been too weak proportionally? Or did the different structure reverse all?

Edited March 5, 2010 by untier

[Sisyphus]

Is there any material difference between human body and dinosaur body? The bones of huge dinosaurs ware diamond formed from the high pressure of their weight? Or else wouldn't they have been too weak proportionally? Or did the different structure reverse all?

 

The bones of huge dinosaurs are proportionally thicker than ours, and they themselves would have been weaker than us relative to their size (though still much stronger in absolute terms, obviously). Just like an elephant, really, only moreso.

[Mr Skeptic]

Likewise, this is similar to how ants are "stronger" than us, being able to carry absurd amounts of their own weight. Our own muscles are better than theirs, but they are smaller. A human-sized ant would collapse under its own weight, as the exoskeleton joints cannot scale up like bones. Bone and muscle strength are based on cross section, not volume, so they increase as r^2 whereas mass increases as r^3, so that bigger things are relatively weaker and tend to have thicker, proportionately shorter bones.

[untier]

What would be a biophysical fundamental of the hulk then? If many of the super heros in comics aren't rational, why were the authors so childish that they even had thought about them?? I think at least the movies adapted from that kind of comics are partially dedicated to adults, aren't they?

Edited March 6, 2010 by untier
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[J.C.MacSwell]

That's just building the lifter out of stronger than biological materials, though. It's not "overcoming" the cube square law. If you scaled down that heavy industrial equipment, it would be able to lift more weight relative to its size.

 

Of course, you could always just take 200 pounds worth of rhinoceros beetles...

 

Essentially this.

 

If you spread out your organism on a surface, no taller than a beetle, it becomes a squared-squared law...you can make it as large as you like.

[michel123456]

The bones of huge dinosaurs are proportionally thicker than ours, and they themselves would have been weaker than us relative to their size (though still much stronger in absolute terms, obviously). Just like an elephant, really, only moreso.

 

The peculiar element in dinosaurs bones is that they are hollow, like birds bones. I am wondering if those creatures could lift their own weight on earth today, but I suppose I am the only one wondering such things, as I never saw any study on that.

[untier]

Essentially this.

 

If you spread out your organism on a surface, no taller than a beetle, it becomes a squared-squared law...you can make it as large as you like.

 

As large as you like... one thing that i can't comprehend is how would the being conduct its body parts, if its body were several light years long...

 

Anyways, what if a creature that's as large and had equivalent mass compared to earth were stalking slowly to earth and touched it... The inbetween gravity would matter much less... And their interactive impact would entirely judged by how powerful the punch were thrown when the creature touched earth...

[foodchain]

At a bacterial scale though there really is no structure I think to support mechanical stuff, such as moving in a manner similar to an ant and or some other invertebrate. There its mostly chemical interaction with the environment at the scale of single celled organisms. I mean you have structure in some ways for motility, but not like with an insect. That scale is incredibly small also, so maybe they dont really need any. I mean could you look at some microbes as being able to survive by being a sort of colloidal suspension.

[Moontanman]

The peculiar element in dinosaurs bones is that they are hollow, like birds bones. I am wondering if those creatures could lift their own weight on earth today, but I suppose I am the only one wondering such things, as I never saw any study on that.

 

What do you mean? Why would dinosaurs not be able to walk around on the earth today? Has gravity changed in 65 million years?

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At a bacterial scale though there really is no structure I think to support mechanical stuff, such as moving in a manner similar to an ant and or some other invertebrate. There its mostly chemical interaction with the environment at the scale of single celled organisms. I mean you have structure in some ways for motility, but not like with an insect. That scale is incredibly small also, so maybe they dont really need any. I mean could you look at some microbes as being able to survive by being a sort of colloidal suspension.

 

Microbes do have internal structures, Eukaryotes are bigger than bacteria and protests are the biggest single celled creatures, Their internal support structures that allow them to be much larger than simple bacteria.

Edited March 6, 2010 by Moontanman
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[Radical Edward]

The peculiar element in dinosaurs bones is that they are hollow, like birds bones. I am wondering if those creatures could lift their own weight on earth today, but I suppose I am the only one wondering such things, as I never saw any study on that.

 

while the bones were hollow, there was a small loss in strength, but it was more than made up for by a loss in mass. They use the same principle as things like tower cranes:

 

[Moontanman]

while the bones were hollow, there was a small loss in strength, but it was more than made up for by a loss in mass. They use the same principle as things like tower cranes:

 

 

Yes, but why would dinosaurs in the past be any different than dinosaurs today? If they worked then why would Michel think they might not work now?

[michel123456]

What do you mean? Why would dinosaurs not be able to walk around on the earth today? Has gravity changed in 65 million years?

 

In the word "dinosaur", you may recognize the word "saur" meaning lizard in the Greek language. The first idea was they were reptiles, based on skeleton morphology & the finding of eggs. Reconstruction of ancient animals were based on this assumption and still today, most of representations of dinosaurs look like reptiles. But more recent discoveries suggest they may be not like that, since reptiles don't have hollow bones. Some scientists even suggest that dinosaurs might have been warm blooded animals.

_on the other hand, all reconstructions of dinosaurs have been made by analogy to today's creatures, counting the effects of the square law and assuming the global circumstances have not change at all.

 

All this give us the image of heavy reptiles dragging their large bodies upon today's Earth.

 

_on the third hand (...), we know that not only dinosaurs were gigantic creatures, but also insects, plants, the entire surrounding. exactly as there were a common scale factor for the entire biosphere. Just as if something had changed in the physics upon Earth.

 

_on the fourth hand ( I begin look like an octopus), as far as I know, it looks like the gravity constant has not changed the past few millions years. But I don't know wether there are indications of a change in gravity upon the Earth in the past. Just a few thoughts.

 

_on the fifth hand, if circumstances have evoluted, the extinction of dinosaurs would have been a consequence of a natural change, nothing mysterious.

[npts2020]

Michel; If the mass of the Earth changed enough to allow gravity to significantly change, how would that affect the moon's orbit? Is there any evidence that it has ever changed much beyond the current miniscule amount it is receding at the moment?

[michel123456]

Michel; If the mass of the Earth changed enough to allow gravity to significantly change, how would that affect the moon's orbit? Is there any evidence that it has ever changed much beyond the current miniscule amount it is receding at the moment?

 

I have absolutely no background, no reference for my ideas. It is only a bunch of syllogisms based on nothing but seemingly logical statements. Don't take that too seriously. (I could continue explaining the formation of mountains, the origin of salt in the oceans, the origin of oceans, and ending into the accretion disk that formed the Earth, but it is taking this thread far over the edge.)

 

I suppose gravity upon the surface is not only related to mass but to dimension too. A planet of same mass but greater radius (i.e. lower density) should have less gravity as measured upon the surface. I don't know the effects upon rotation speed or Moon's orbit.