We should breed more impressive spiders

[Regnes]

We should be directing more of our resources into breeding the perfect spider, bigger than a Goliath Birdeater, and more aggressive/venomous than a Brazilian Wandering Spider/Sydney Funnel-web., and more adaptable than any spider, can live virtually anywhere except the frozen north/south

 

The largest spider is often compared to being the size of a dinner plate, well we should be aiming to increase the size to that of a truck tire. Sydney Funnel-webs are typically a pretty pissed off spider, but we could possibly encourage their body to release a lot of natural steroids into their system, give them some roid rage to play around with, that coupled with the face that the new spider will hopefully be much closer to the size of a human will make it much much more likely to attack.

 

I read on Wikipedia that there have been no recorded deaths from Funnel-webs since 1981, this is honestly unacceptable and we need to be trying harder, the spiders will need preportionally larger fangs, and venom glands at least 5 times larger than normal to be able to gush as much venom into human prey as possible, in addition to the venom being more potent than anything else before it, we should be seeing human fatalities skyrocketing. I also am considering starting a petition to outlaw the practice of creating anti-venoms as they are making a mockery of nature.

 

Imagine you're taking a stroll along a forest path, you see a big spider web and decide to take a look at it, instead of a small bugs wrapped up in silk you see actual people there, some even still alive and struggling to escape, and then suddenly the spider pounces onto you and sinks its fangs into your neck and eats you alive, how cool would that be?

 

 

[Moontanman]

We should be directing more of our resources into breeding the perfect spider, bigger than a Goliath Birdeater, and more aggressive/venomous than a Brazilian Wandering Spider/Sydney Funnel-web., and more adaptable than any spider, can live virtually anywhere except the frozen north/south

 

Ummm, why?

 

 

The largest spider is often compared to being the size of a dinner plate, well we should be aiming to increase the size to that of a truck tire. Sydney Funnel-webs are typically a pretty pissed off spider, but we could possibly encourage their body to release a lot of natural steroids into their system, give them some roid rage to play around with, that coupled with the face that the new spider will hopefully be much closer to the size of a human will make it much much more likely to attack.

 

Really large spiders are not possible, the square cube law tells us that animals with exoskeletons have size limits and really large spiders would be at a distinct disadvantage to both other creatures and us...

 

 

I read on Wikipedia that there have been no recorded deaths from Funnel-webs since 1981, this is honestly unacceptable and we need to be trying harder, the spiders will need preportionally larger fangs, and venom glands at least 5 times larger than normal to be able to gush as much venom into human prey as possible, in addition to the venom being more potent than anything else before it, we should be seeing human fatalities skyrocketing. I also am considering starting a petition to outlaw the practice of creating anti-venoms as they are making a mockery of nature.

 

OIC a nature lover, humans need a predator species that preys on us???

 

 

Imagine you're taking a stroll along a forest path, you see a big spider web and decide to take a look at it, instead of a small bugs wrapped up in silk you see actual people there, some even still alive and struggling to escape, and then suddenly the spider pounces onto you and sinks its fangs into your neck and eats you alive, how cool would that be?

 

 

Not cool at all unless of course it was you being eaten, alive.

[DJBruce]

I also am considering starting a petition to outlaw the practice of creating anti-venoms as they are making a mockery of nature.

 

Why not just outlaw all medical treatment. I mean if you think its a mockery of nature to save people from spider bites surely its a mockery to treat people having heart attacks, cancer, or the flu. B)

 

Imagine you're taking a stroll along a forest path, you see a big spider web and decide to take a look at it, instead of a small bugs wrapped up in silk you see actual people there, some even still alive and struggling to escape, and then suddenly the spider pounces onto you and sinks its fangs into your neck and eats you alive, how cool would that be?

 

Umm, that would not be cool in the least, I enjoy living.

[Sisyphus]

The problem is that a spider as large as a truck tire probably couldn't even move or breathe, let alone "pounce" on anything. Body plans just don't scale that way, because strength does not scale in proportion to size, surface area does not scale in proportion to mass, etc. The largest terrestrial arthropod in the world is the coconut crab, and they probably can't get much bigger than that. Coconut crabs are, necessarily, very sluggish in proportion to their size relative to their smaller relatives. Make something that size that can leap out of a tree and sink fangs into your neck, and you'll have to make so many changes that it will be nothing like a spider.

[Sayonara]

I guess they will just have to be robots.

[Moontanman]

Now if you made an artificial habitat on the moon you might get really big spiders, give them a very high oxygen atmosphere, low gravity and in many thousands of generations you just might get really big spiders.... The ones in my back yard are big enough.. like writing spiders but about twice as big....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_clavipes

 

[John Salerno]

I'm curious about this "square cube law" and how it limits body size. I read this on the Wikipedia page:

 

"If an animal were scaled up by a considerable amount, its muscular strength would be severely reduced since the cross section of its muscles would increase by the square of the scaling factor while their mass would increase by the cube of the scaling factor."

 

I'm not going to pretend that I understand everything that sentence is saying, but let me try first: If an animal increases in size, its mass would increase more than its muscles, so it wouldn't be able to support its new mass?

 

If that's correct, I'm just wondering, couldn't it come about that a species evolves to a larger size over time so that it *could* support itself? Take the spider for example. The above quote seems to prevent the artificial scaling of a spider to a large size, I get that, but does it also mean a spider could *never* get large even through the course of normal evolution?

[Sisyphus]

I'm curious about this "square cube law" and how it limits body size. I read this on the Wikipedia page:

 

"If an animal were scaled up by a considerable amount, its muscular strength would be severely reduced since the cross section of its muscles would increase by the square of the scaling factor while their mass would increase by the cube of the scaling factor."

 

I'm not going to pretend that I understand everything that sentence is saying, but let me try first: If an animal increases in size, its mass would increase more than its muscles, so it wouldn't be able to support its new mass?

 

If that's correct, I'm just wondering, couldn't it come about that a species evolves to a larger size over time so that it *could* support itself? Take the spider for example. The above quote seems to prevent the artificial scaling of a spider to a large size, I get that, but does it also mean a spider could *never* get large even through the course of normal evolution?

 

Well sure. Animals can be different sizes, they just can't be directly scaled up versions of one another. You can have a huge range of sizes of, say mammals (or spiders), but there's a reason an elephant does not look or act like a giant mouse. And any basic body plan is going to have an upper size limit at which it is viable. Spiders have exoskeletons, which for various reasons seems to impose an upper limit not much larger than the largest such animals we see already. Kind of like internal skeletons are not really viable for animals the size of an ant.

[Moontanman]

The breathing apparatus of arthropods limits how big they get as well, back when there were 6' long centipedes the oxygen content of the atmosphere is thought to have been close to 35% I think the inefficient breathing apparatus limits their size more than having an exoskeleton but both do limit the size of those animals...

[John Salerno]

Well sure. Animals can be different sizes, they just can't be directly scaled up versions of one another. You can have a huge range of sizes of, say mammals (or spiders), but there's a reason an elephant does not look or act like a giant mouse. And any basic body plan is going to have an upper size limit at which it is viable. Spiders have exoskeletons, which for various reasons seems to impose an upper limit not much larger than the largest such animals we see already. Kind of like internal skeletons are not really viable for animals the size of an ant.

 

But I guess another way of asking my question is, even if we were to artificially scale up the size of a spider, couldn't we just artificially scale up everything else so that it doesn't succumb to the square cube principle? Or is the very nature of the exoskeleton what makes them an exception? What about other animals, like the mouse you mentioned. Couldn't we artificially make it a giant mouse by also increasing its muscles and mass in the proper proportion?

 

Basically, my confusion comes from the statement I quoted originally. That statement seems to assume that even if you artificially increase the size of something, the other aspects of that organism (muscle, mass, etc.) increase in fixed ratios and cannot themselves be artificially altered as well to accommodate for the new size. That doesn't sound right. If we're already playing mad scientist with the size, why not adjust *everything* to the proper ratios so that the organism is viable?

Edited August 29, 2010 by John Salerno

[Sayonara]

Basically, my confusion comes from the statement I quoted originally. That statement seems to assume that even if you artificially increase the size of something, the other aspects of that organism (muscle, mass, etc.) increase in fixed ratios and cannot themselves be artificially altered as well to accommodate for the new size. That doesn't sound right. If we're already playing mad scientist with the size, why not adjust *everything* to the proper ratios so that the organism is viable?

Well for starters to make the muscle strength scale up with volume, you'd have to make the muscle tissues far more densely packed, which would quickly strangle nutrient and oxygen supply to the fibres. IOW, you're working against your own goals.

[John Salerno]

That makes sense. So maybe a more fundamental question is simply, when does the square cube principle come into play? Is it strictly for artificially enhancing size? Or does it have implications even in the natural course of evolution?

 

To put it as naively as possible (yes, I see how dumb this question is before I even ask it), why can we have elephants as big as they are then? Why is their muscle tissue not so densely packed to accommodate their size that it becomes a problem for them? They obviously grew large from a relatively small size, so during that growing, how did the muscle growth keep up? And why can't the same happen to a mouse?

[Sisyphus]

That makes sense. So maybe a more fundamental question is simply, when does the square cube principle come into play? Is it strictly for artificially enhancing size? Or does it have implications even in the natural course of evolution?

 

The square cube law applies to everything. It's why a two story house can be made of wood, but not an 80 story skyscraper. So yeah, it's relevant to evolution. In order for an animal to increase or decrease much in size, lots of other things are going to be selected for at the same time.

 

To put it as naively as possible (yes, I see how dumb this question is before I even ask it), why can we have elephants as big as they are then? Why is their muscle tissue not so densely packed to accommodate their size that it becomes a problem for them? They obviously grew large from a relatively small size, so during that growing, how did the muscle growth keep up? And why can't the same happen to a mouse?

 

The same can happen to a mouse. An elephant is a "scaled up" smaller mammal. And if you make a mouse as big as an elephant, after all the other changes you'll have to make it's going to end up looking and acting more like an elephant than a mouse, because the overall body plans are dependent on scale. But there's only so much you can change. The largest land mammal is obviously many many times larger than the smallest, and so too is the largest spider thousands of times larger than the smallest. It's just not unlimited.

[Moontanman]

That makes sense. So maybe a more fundamental question is simply, when does the square cube principle come into play? Is it strictly for artificially enhancing size? Or does it have implications even in the natural course of evolution?

 

 

If you took a skeleton of an elephant and made an exact copy but scaled it down to the size of a mouse, or vice versa, you would see striking differences in the skeleton, as you would the muscles and all other parts of the body. There were dinosaurs much bigger than elephants but they were not made the same as an elephant. Once you get past a certain point you would have to radically redesign the creature to make it bigger. Take for instance a human being, lets say he is 6' tall and give him plenty of muscles, athletic, he weighs 200 lbs, make him 12 feet tall and his feet would have four times the surface area but he would weigh 1600 lbs. His lungs would be four times as big but they would have to ventilate 8 times as much flesh, only completely new design would even allow him to move around...

 

To put it as naively as possible (yes, I see how dumb this question is before I even ask it), why can we have elephants as big as they are then? Why is their muscle tissue not so densely packed to accommodate their size that it becomes a problem for them? They obviously grew large from a relatively small size, so during that growing, how did the muscle growth keep up? And why can't the same happen to a mouse?

 

As elephants evolved from small animals their body plans changed radically and still an elephant is not as active or maneuverable as his tiny ancestors. I'm not going to claim arthropods could not evolve into large animals but doing so would take such a huge redesign of the way their bodies work they would not resemble what we think of as arthropods now, everything from the way they breath to the way they walk to the tiniest details would be radically different. Creatures with endo-skeletons wiped out the large land arthropods and have suppressed any development in that direction ever since... Creatures with exoskeletons didn't get a chance to evolve very far in the large size direction. If endo-skeleton land animals had never evolved we might see some large, even active exoskeleton animals, but it's difficult to imagine them having no examples to work from...

[John Salerno]

I think I get it now. The principle is basically an "upper limit" rule for an animal insofar as it actually remains that animal as it grows larger, rather than becoming so altered that it's no longer reasonable to call it a spider, or elephant, or whatever, anymore. And I suppose the main point is that this change can't happen in a small amount of time, hence the original point of saying spiders (as we know them) cannot get much larger than the largest that we've observed?

[dragonstar57]

so how far can things be scaled up or down?

would it be possible to scale up a mouse to the size of a medium or large dog (90-150 lbs?) or scale a dog up to the size of a horse?

or a elephant down to the size of an s.u.v? (i may be overestimating how big elephants are to begin with)

and if you scaled a mouse up to the size of a dog or a elephant down to a s.u.v or a dog up to the size of a horse would these creatures instincts be the same Ie. mouse liking cheese, elephant using its nose to drink,and dog chasing cars?

[Moontanman]

so how far can things be scaled up or down?

would it be possible to scale up a mouse to the size of a medium or large dog (90-150 lbs?) or scale a dog up to the size of a horse?

or a elephant down to the size of an s.u.v? (i may be overestimating how big elephants are to begin with)

and if you scaled a mouse up to the size of a dog or a elephant down to a s.u.v or a dog up to the size of a horse would these creatures instincts be the same Ie. mouse liking cheese, elephant using its nose to drink,and dog chasing cars?

 

 

Mice and cheese is an old wives tale, they will eat it but prefer seeds and grain, but I see your point and yes the basic instincts would be similar, while animals do have basic instincts learned behavior is also important and mammals especially can and do learn new behaviors in novel situations. There have been species of elephants isolated on islands that evolved to the size of small ponies and there are, or have been, 200 lb rodents.

 

A saw a woman who had a Capybara as a pet, for all practical purposes is it a 100 lb Guinea pig. large dogs like Great Danes suffer from being so big, they are easily hurt and live short lives due to simply being too big for their body plan, rodents seem to be a bit more flexible but large species of rodents are not just scaled up mice.... I would predict that it would be easier to scale down an animal than scale it up, the tiny miniature horses (and other livestock) are a case in point...

Edited August 29, 2010 by Moontanman

[Mr Skeptic]

The cube-square law is basically a limit for scaling things up or down as-is. Scaling things up for example, you increase body mass and muscle mass as cube, but surface areas as squares. So as you scale up, bones will have to thicken significantly, heat dissipation starts becoming a problem (see: elephant ears), lung and digestive capacity have to increase surface area beyond just scaling up, etc.

 

So for example, let's say you have a 10 ft elephant weighing 10,000 lb, and you want to scale it up to godzilla-size proportions of 100 ft high. Then it will weigh 10,000,000 lb, 1000 times as much, but its bones will only be 10 times thicker with only 100 times the area. Now let's say you actually managed to make this work, using magically strong bones etc to make the scaling work. How high could this giant elephant jump? Well, the energy in the muscles will scale with muscle mass but so will the mass, so this monster can jump only as high as a normal elephant despite being 10 times as big. And if you consider all the extra weight from the bones you would have to make much thicker, it would be able to jump less high than a normal elephant despite being 10 times bigger. If you've ever been to a zoo and seen an elephant exhibit with a wimpy little fence and a shallow ditch, it is the ditch that keeps the elephant in -- a fall of a few ft could kill them. The biggie sized elephant could likewise be held back by a shallow ditch that wouldn't hold back a toddler. For pouncing species making them bigger will make their leaping less impressive relative to their body size.

[John Salerno]

The cube-square law is basically a limit for scaling things up or down as-is. Scaling things up for example, you increase body mass and muscle mass as cube, but surface areas as squares.

 

I thought it was muscle mass that increase by the square? Or is it that mass increases by the cube, and the surface area of these same things increase by the square? So the muscle mass is cubed, but the muscle surface area is squared? If so I think I misunderstood that originally quote I had above.

[Mr Skeptic]

Scaling up, the muscle mass is cubed and the muscle cross section squared. So the muscle has cube more energy, cube more weight, requires cube more oxygen and nutrients, and has square more strength (ie, weaker compared to its mass). If humans could be shrunk down to tiny sizes, we would beat ants at weight-lifting because our muscles are better -- but we'd probably freeze to death, and I have no idea how our capillaries and other surfaces would react.

[dragonstar57]

but how far is such scaling possible before that effect takes effect enough to make the animal nonviable?

it may depend on the definition "nonviable" so i'l define it in the way i used it

nonviable-respiration and circulation is hindered enough to limit energy and cause a significant lifespan decrease

the speed of an animal is affected to the point that mobility is affected severely

this definition may be lacking but i think you get the idea