The Biology of B-movie Monsters

This is a fascinating artile. It's written by an invertebrate zoologist (how cool is that?) so it's heavy on the science, but if you can understand one mathematical principle then the rest of the reading will make sense.

If you take a cube with edges that are 1 inch long, then you have three properties to think of: length (of an edge), area (of a side), and volume (of the cube).

Length: 1 = 1
Area: 1 x 1 = 1
Volume: 1 x 1 x 1 = 1

Suppose you increase the length of the edge to three:

Length: 3 = 3
Area: 3 x 3 = 9
Volume: 3 x 3 x 3 = 27

In other words, as linear size gets bigger, the area increases faster than the length does, and the volumne increases faster than both the length and the area.

And this ends up answering all sorts of questions about why animals' bodies behave the way that they do and are built the way that they are. Did you know that a mouse will survive a fall from ANY height, for instance? It also explains how a caterpillar moves as well as how the respiratory system of an insect works. Fascinating!

The Biology of B-movie Monsters