Does King Kong have bigger hair or just more of it?


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Sovereign Court

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Another biology question from the guy who wanted to know about super-giant trees.

Do giant animals have larger body parts (not limbs, but things like hair, veins, cells, etc.) or just more of them? There should be some real world examples with things like elephants, whales and giant squid, but I don't know enough about them.

Dark Archive

According to partner who is currently taking a PHD in Biology. Every animal has blood vessels in proportion to their body size. So basically thats all I got for you.


Jeremy Mcgillan wrote:
According to partner who is currently taking a PHD in Biology. Every animal has blood vessels in proportion to their body size. So basically thats all I got for you.

I have a sleeping bag fashioned from a relatively short section of blue whale aorta. I'm snuggling in it now. :) Mmm... cozy and endangered.

Sovereign Court

The Jade wrote:
I have a sleeping bag fashioned from a relatively short section of blue whale aorta. I'm snuggling in it now. :) Mmm... cozy and endangered.

Heh..

Sovereign Court

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Jeremy Mcgillan wrote:
According to partner who is currently taking a PHD in Biology. Every animal has blood vessels in proportion to their body size. So basically thats all I got for you.

So it's really like those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs is walking around on a giant dog with hairs the size of trees?

The Exchange

My understanding is that most mammals have roughly the same number of cells. So those for a whale are much larger than those for a mouse. I suspect that is because that most mammals are descended from the same creature, so creating more cells was more difficult than makings the ones you have bigger.

And body parts scale up too. There are biophysical issues about some things (mostly surface area to volume ratios) so big things are stouter than their smaller equivalents, otherwise yes - a blue whale's aorta is big enough for someone to snuggle up in, if they so chose.


The biggest blue whale aorta I ever tried to fit into was actually only 9 inches (23 cm) across. Luckily it has a leggings type elasticity.

Still, that's pretty big for a blood vessel.

You could hold a poker game in the thing's heart.

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