35 replies to this topic

[MidKn13ght]

I thought i saw a show/documentry about i wanna say pre-dinosaur earth evolution type thingy, and it said that insects and aracnades where the size of buses due to the oxygen to carbon dioxide or methan ratio.... or maybe it was about how an alien planet would form with methan..hmm

[Ad hoc]

engineer them some lungs! that'll be good.

[bugwatcher]

Thank goodness nature prevents bugs growing to rule the world! This is down to the scaling law first recognised by Galileo. He identified that if the diameter of a sphere is increased twofold, the surface area is multiplied by 4 and the volume by 8. This means that elements of a body are not scaled up by the same amount. In other words a bug would become too heavy for its legs if it grew to say the size of a human.

[Mike D boy]

Evolution does strange things to make a species cope with changing environments around them, like in prehistoric times insects are able to adjust to larger body masses. I don't expect a resurge in primal reverse evolution within the next million years or so, if humans are around to witness first-hand the growth of insects and arthropods to average human size. The thought of it is interesting, but downright frightening. LOL!

[g00dfella]

Actually some insects were smaller back then, like cockroaches for example...today we have the biggest in history.

A bee the size of a car would have a tough time trying to pollinate and gather honey.

[Taun]

Fire ants are bad enough as is... could you imagine a nest full of those if they were the size of poodles?...