What Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
Summary
TLDRThis video script explores the profound impact of size on the biology and survival of living organisms. It begins with a thought experiment involving a mouse, a dog, and an elephant falling from a skyscraper onto a stack of mattresses, illustrating how the mouse survives due to its small size and the elephant doesn't due to its massive size. The video delves into the principles of scaling, explaining how an increase in size leads to a disproportionate increase in surface area and volume, affecting an organism's weight, kinetic energy, and the impact of a fall. It highlights that smaller creatures like insects have a larger surface area relative to their mass, allowing them to survive falls that would be fatal for larger animals. The script also discusses the challenges small organisms face, such as the deadly effects of water due to surface tension, and how insects have evolved to be water-repellent. It touches on the unique adaptations of the smallest insects, like the Fairy Fly, which live in a world where air behaves like a syrup. The video promises to further investigate the reasons behind the lack of extremely large or small species in future episodes, inviting viewers to subscribe for updates.
Takeaways
- 🐭 The mouse survives a fall from a skyscraper because of its small size and the principle of scaling, which affects how gravity impacts different sizes.
- 🐘 An elephant explodes upon impact due to its large size having a small surface area relative to its volume, leading to a high concentration of kinetic energy.
- 🐶 The dog dies from the fall because its size does not offer the same protective benefits against gravity as the mouse, resulting in fatal injuries.
- 🔢 Size is a crucial factor in determining the biology and experiences of living beings, with different sizes living in unique environments with distinct rules.
- 🌐 Life spans across a vast range of sizes, from bacteria to blue whales, each with their own advantages and challenges.
- 🎾 The physical laws affecting living things change with size, impacting how they are built and how they live and die.
- 🌌 Small creatures like insects have a large surface area relative to their mass, which allows them to survive falls that would be deadly to larger animals.
- 💧 Insects face different challenges, such as the deadly effects of water due to surface tension, which is much stronger relative to their size.
- 🦟 Insects have evolved adaptations like water-repellent exoskeletons and tiny hairs to combat the dangers of water's surface tension.
- 🕷️ Some insects use surface tension to 'breathe' underwater by trapping an air bubble around them, allowing for gas exchange.
- 🦋 The smallest insects, like the Fairy Fly, experience the world very differently, with air acting more like a thick fluid that they must swim through.
- 🤔 The video script raises questions about why certain sizes do not exist, such as ants the size of horses or elephants the size of amoeba, to be explored in future content.
Q & A
Why does the mouse survive the fall from the skyscraper but the dog and the elephant do not?
-The mouse survives due to its small size, which allows it to have a larger surface area relative to its mass, distributing the impact and allowing air resistance to slow it down. In contrast, the elephant and dog, being much larger, have less surface area relative to their volume, leading to a more severe impact and no significant air resistance to cushion their fall.
What principle is highlighted in the script that explains the survival of the mouse and the death of the dog and elephant?
-The script highlights the principle of scaling size, which changes everything in terms of physics and biology. The relative surface area to volume ratio plays a crucial role in how animals experience forces like gravity and air resistance.
How does the script explain the impact of gravity on very small and very large animals?
-The script explains that very small animals are practically immune to the effects of gravity due to their large surface area relative to mass, which allows them to fall from great heights without harm. Conversely, very large animals, like elephants, have a small surface area relative to their volume, leading to a concentrated impact and destruction upon landing.
What are the three features of a theoretical spherical animal mentioned in the script, and how do they change with size?
-The three features are length, surface area, and volume. When the animal's size is increased, its skin (surface area) grows by the square of the increase, and its volume (and thus mass) grows by the cube of the increase, which significantly affects its weight and the impact of a fall.
Why is the force of water's surface tension potentially deadly for insects?
-Water's surface tension acts like an 'invisible skin' that is weak for larger animals but strong for insects due to their small size. This force can be so strong that getting wet is a matter of life and death for insects, as it can quickly engulf them and make it difficult for them to break free, leading to drowning.
How have insects evolved to deal with the threat of water's surface tension?
-Insects have evolved to be water repellent. Their exoskeletons are often covered with a thin layer of wax, and many have tiny hairs that increase their surface area and prevent water droplets from touching their exoskeleton, making it easier to shed water.
What adaptation allows some insects to 'breathe' underwater using surface tension?
-Some insects have evolved a surface covered by a short and extremely dense coat of water-repelling hair. When they dive underwater, air stays inside their fur, forming an air bubble. This allows oxygen to diffuse into the bubble from the surrounding water while carbon dioxide diffuses out, effectively acting as an external lung.
How does the script describe the experience of air for the smallest insects, like the Fairy Fly?
-For the smallest insects, like the Fairy Fly, air is described as being more like a thin jello or syrup-like mass, making movement through it difficult. They have to 'swim' through the air rather than glide, with their wings resembling big hairy arms.
What are some of the physical rules that change as life grows in size, according to the script?
-The script suggests that as life grows in size, the physical rules change significantly. For example, gravity, air resistance, and surface tension have different impacts on organisms of different sizes, leading to unique adaptations and limitations for each size category.
What questions are posed by the script regarding the size of animals, and what will be discussed in the next part of the series?
-The script poses questions about why there are no ants the size of horses or elephants the size of amoeba. These questions set up the discussion for the next part of the series, where the reasons behind these size limitations will be explored.
Outlines
🐭 The Impact of Size on Survival
This paragraph explores the concept of size as a critical factor in the survival of living organisms. It begins with a thought experiment involving a mouse, a dog, and an elephant falling from a skyscraper, highlighting the mouse's survival due to its small size. The script delves into the physical laws that affect organisms of different sizes, explaining how smaller creatures are less affected by gravity and have a higher surface area to volume ratio, which softens impacts and allows for a greater resistance to falling. The paragraph also touches on the challenges faced by smaller organisms, such as the deadly effects of surface tension in water for insects. It sets the stage for a series of videos examining the unique rules and experiences of different sizes in the animal kingdom.
🔬 The Microscopic World and Evolutionary Adaptations
The second paragraph delves into the peculiarities of the microscopic world, focusing on the challenges faced by very small insects like the Fairy Fly. It describes how these tiny creatures navigate an environment where even air behaves like a thick fluid, requiring them to 'swim' through it. The paragraph discusses the evolutionary adaptations that have allowed insects to survive in their unique universe, such as water-repellent exoskeletons and tiny hairs that prevent water from sticking to them. It also explains how some insects use surface tension to 'breathe' underwater by carrying an air bubble with them. The script raises intriguing questions about the limits of size in the natural world and promises further exploration in upcoming videos, while inviting viewers to subscribe to a newsletter for more content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Size
💡Scaling
💡Surface Area
💡Volume
💡Kinetic Energy
💡Air Resistance
💡Cohesion
💡Surface Tension
💡Exoskeleton
💡Evolution
💡Fairy Fly
Highlights
Size is the most underappreciated regulator of living things, affecting biology, construction, experience, and lifespan.
Physical laws differ for animals of different sizes, impacting how they live and die.
Small animals are practically immune to falling from great heights due to the effect of gravity on their size.
Scaling size changes everything, impacting how falling affects an animal's survival.
The relationship between an animal's surface area, volume, and mass determines the impact of a fall.
Elephants have a small surface area relative to volume, leading to a devastating impact when falling.
Insects have a large surface area relative to mass, allowing them to survive falls that would harm larger animals.
Surface tension is a deadly force for small insects due to its strong effect relative to their size.
Insects have evolved to be water-repellent to counteract the life-threatening effects of surface tension.
Some insects use nanotechnology-evolved water-repelling hairs to breathe underwater利用 surface tension.
As size decreases, even air becomes more solid, affecting the movement of the smallest insects.
The Fairy Fly, one of the smallest insects, swims through air that is like a syrup to them.
Different sizes experience unique physical rules, leading to diverse evolutionary adaptations.
The video series will explore why there are no ants the size of horses or elephants the size of amoeba.
A monthly newsletter is available for updates on new videos and bonus content.
Transcripts
Let's start this video by throwing a mouse, a dog, and an elephant
from a skyscraper onto something soft.
Let's say, a stack of mattresses.
The mouse lands and is stunned for a moment,
before it shakes itself off,
and walks away pretty annoyed,
because that's a very rude thing to do.
The dog breaks all of its bones
and dies in an unspectacular way,
and the elephant explodes into a red puddle of bones and insides
and has no chance to be annoyed.
Why does the mouse survive,
but the elephant and dog don't?
The answer is size.
Size is the most underappreciated regulator of living things.
Size determines everything about our biology,
how we are built, how we experience the world, how we live and die.
It does so because the physical laws are different for different sized animals.
Life spans seven orders of magnitude, from invisible bacteria to mites, ants,
mice, dogs, humans, elephants and, blue whales. Every size lives in its own
unique universe right next to each other, each with its own rules, upsides, and
downsides. We'll explore these different worlds in a series of videos. Let's get
back to the initial question: Why did our mouse survive the fall? Because of how
scaling size changes everything; a principle that we'll meet over and
over again. Very small things, for example, are practically immune to falling from
great heights because the smaller you are the less you care about the effect
of gravity. Imagine a theoretical spherical animal
the size of a marble. It has three features: its length, its surface area,
(which is covered in skin) and its volume, or all the stuff inside it like organs,
muscles, hopes and dreams. If we make it ten times longer, say the size of a
basketball, the rest of its features don't just grow ten times. Its skin will
grow 100 times and it's inside (so it's volume) grows by 1000 times. The volume
determines the weight, or more accurately, mass of the animal. The more mass you
have, the higher your kinetic energy before you hit the ground and the
stronger the impact shock. The more surface area in relation to your volume
or mass you have, the more the impact gets distributed and softened, and also
the more air resistance will slow you down. An elephant is so big that it has
extremely little surface area in ratio to its volume. So a lot of kinetic energy
gets distributed over a small space and the air doesn't slow it down much at all.
That's why it's completely destroyed in an impressive explosion of goo when it
hits the ground. The other extreme, insects, have a huge surface area in
relation to their tiny mass so you can literally throw an ant from an airplane
and it will not be seriously harmed. But while falling is irrelevant in the small
world there are other forces for the harmless for us but extremely dangerous
for small beings. Like surface tension which turns water into a potentially
deadly substance for insects. How does it work? Water has the tendency to stick to
itself; its molecules are attracted to each other through a force called
cohesion which creates a tension on its surface that you can imagine as a sort
of invisible skin. For us this skin is so weak that we don't even notice it
normally. If you get wet about 800 grams of water or about one percent of your
body weight sticks to you. A wet mouse has about 3 grams of water sticking to
it, which is more than 10% of its body weight. Imagine having eight full water
bottle sticking to you when you leave the shower. But for an insect the force
of water surface tension is so strong that getting wet is a question of life
and death. If we were to shrink you to the size of
an ant and you touch water it would be like you were reaching into glue. It
would quickly engulf you, its surface tension too hard for you to break and
you'd drown. So insects evolved to be water repellent. For one their exoskeleton is
covered with a thin layer of wax just like a car. This makes their surface at
least partly water repellent because it can't stick to it very well. Many insects
are also covered with tiny hairs that serve as a barrier. They vastly increase
their surface area and prevent the droplets from touching their exoskeleton
and make it easier to get rid of droplets. To make use of surface tension
evolution cracked nanotechnology billions of years before us. Some insects
have evolved a surface covered by a short and extremely dense coat of water
repelling hair. Some have more than a million hairs per square millimeter when
the insect dives under water air stays inside their fur and forms a coat of air.
Water can't enter it because their hairs are too tiny to break its surface tension.
But it gets even better, as the oxygen of the air bubble runs out, new oxygen
diffuses into the bubble from the water around, it while the carbon dioxide
diffuses outwards into the water. And so the insect carries its own outside lung
around and can basically breathe underwater thanks to surface tension.
This is the same principle that enables pond skaters to walk on water by the way,
tiny anti-water hairs. The smaller you get the weirder the environment becomes. At
some point even air becomes more and more solid. Let's now zoom down to the
smallest insects known, about half the size of a grain of salt,
only 0.15 millimeters long: the Fairy Fly. They live in a world even weirder than
another insects. For them air itself is like thin jello, a syrup-like mass
surrounding them at all times. Movement through it is not easy. Flying
on this level is not like elegant gliding; they have to kind of grab and
hold onto air. So their wings look like big hairy arms rather than proper insect
wings. They literally swim through the air, like a tiny gross alien through
syrup. Things only become stranger from here on
as we explore more diversity of different sizes. The physical rules are
so different for each size that evolution had to engineer around them
over and over as life grew in size in the last billion years. So why are there
no ants the size of horses? Why are no elephants the size of amoeba? Why?
We'll discuss this in the next part.
We have a monthly newsletter now, sign up if
you don't want to miss new videos and for bonus videos.
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