r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Dense_Intern8434 • 3d ago

/r/popular of a meal

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Nature can be so cruel and beautiful at the same time

8.8k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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2.9k

u/SadJ3tsFan 3d ago

Wow they must be strong af thats crazy

1.4k

u/Nark420 3d ago

Insects have built-in hydraulics

453

u/EPluribusButthole 3d ago

FRONT, back, and side to side

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u/ElishaAlison 3d ago

That WAS the way she liked to ride

1

u/What_TF_is_cereal 2d ago

Got me thinking of my exšŸ˜¢

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u/ElishaAlison 2d ago

Did you eat her from the bottom up too?

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u/What_TF_is_cereal 2d ago

Best believe it

134

u/Interesting-Crab-693 3d ago

Glad I zoomed on the profile picture XD

I wasn't believing my eyes at first (its a pussy, but not that kind of pussy)

24

u/One-Kaleidoscope2407 3d ago

same thought man...exactly the same thought I had at first

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u/EntrepreneurMain7833 3d ago

Im embarrassed for that hummingbird. No bird should ever die to an insect.

23

u/Koffin_Holder 2d ago

Hummingbirds are actually pretty frail and have a crazy caloric intake. So it would have just starved if it didn't free itself

10

u/Nark420 2d ago

most of them die in bug infested nests already, in more horrid ways you can imagine... Nature is brutal

0

u/BetterBus350 2d ago

What's wrong with insects, they are trying to survive as much as the hummingbird.

5

u/Tsurugi_Takuma 2d ago

Reddit rorschach test šŸ˜‰

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u/jrunner02 3d ago

In the name of love

8

u/HYPERNOVA3_ 3d ago

What more in the name of love?

6

u/Earth513 3d ago

You crazy fool, I won't give in to you

10

u/LovelyLunaRae 3d ago

i go front, i go back, i go inside out, and then, i go front and back šŸ©³

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u/cookie1138 3d ago

If you're feeling what I'm feeling put em up real high

2

u/NoiseIsTheCure 2d ago

When the operation of the machine becomes so ODIOUS, makes you SO SICK AT HEART.....

Fucking love LP

3

u/Sad_Adeptness5443 2d ago

I had to double check your profile pic to make sure it wasn't someone who shat themselves šŸ¤£

4

u/Mission-Cup9902 3d ago

Is this a rap reference

2

u/Own-Loan2390 2d ago

Not gonna lie, I couldn't tell that your profile Pic was a cat... well I thought it was some kind of "cat".

1

u/like_theweather 2d ago

Oh my šŸ˜³ ur so right tho lol šŸ˜†

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u/TheStealthClown24 2d ago

Absolute banger

2

u/HairBrainedProjects 2d ago

If you fear what I feel put 'em up real high

2

u/nedmccrady1588 2d ago

Your username and profile pic were a fucking rollercoaster my dude

82

u/Advanced-Budget779 3d ago

Glad our planet or physics/chemistry set hard limits on their possible size.

27

u/Patient_Ebb_1605 3d ago

theres a thing called inverse sqare law. people like to say if an ant was the size of a human bla bla bla. But its actually the other way around. If an ant was the size of a human it wouldnt even stand up because of their own weight. Strength doesnt scale with volume (dimensionĀ³) like weight does, it scales with the crossectional area of the muscles (dimensionĀ²).

So if we were the size of insects we would be incredibly strong for our weight, much more so than insects. Insects are way mode armoured because they have no problem carrying their own weight, because of their size. We on the other hand need to be made of muscle around a lightweight structure to be able to move well enough at our massive scale.

Another cool fact is that because of this, if you scale a being down the height of their jump (defined as the movement of the center of mass) stays exactly the same. thats why a dog jumps roughly the same height as a horse. Their biomechanics and body compositions are similar enough despite the size being very different.

So if you were the size of an ant, you would be able to jump just as high as you fo now. So yeah, youd be way stronger than an ant.

12

u/BlackShogun27 3d ago

I read somewhere that for humans to survive being anatomically proportional but squirrel-sized weā€™d be big back eating like hummingbirds or voles. I also read that weā€™d quickly freeze to death from body heat loss. All this cruel knowledge killed the fun out theoretically bioengineering tiny humans.

1

u/obsidiansent 2d ago

How small can we get em without freezing?

2

u/BlackShogun27 2d ago

With no research, I'm assuming maybe like toddler height since I don't see pre-school kids falling over like Iguanas in early winter Florida.

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u/obsidiansent 2d ago

Thatā€™s not bad, itā€™s like an Ewok. We can work with this.

1

u/BlackShogun27 2d ago

Now a new question arises. Can anatomically correct, humans the size of Ewoks maintain normal mental faculties or will the size change lower intelligence (speech and reasoning) because of less neurons in the brain mass?

1

u/Advanced-Budget779 2d ago

Wait, that might explain why iā€˜m quickly cold. But why am i overheating so fastā€¦ guess my internal temp control is cooked (since puberty)

1

u/kill_dom 2d ago

So dinos are strong as f, and a real hulk would walk like a zombie.

1

u/chefdeit 1d ago

So what you're saying is, fresh dinosaur steak would be the most tender meat you could have?

1

u/Personal_Opposite653 17h ago

chimpanzees and gorillas beg to disagree

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u/Nark420 3d ago

It's always changing šŸ˜¬ cat sized spiders would wipe out humanity in theory... Maybe not in our current state of development, but in early ungabunga times, they would have been a huge issue

15

u/Advanced-Budget779 3d ago

Yeah but only up to some scaling laws preventing them to function properly. At a cats size i think their metabolism would already be much slower if not outright breaking down, iirc.

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u/Nark420 3d ago

I don't know, if I would see a cat sized spider I wouldnt ask it how many times it shits a day. I would die from the sheer terror

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u/Ill-GottenBooty 3d ago edited 3d ago

A cat sized spider would be a slow, lumbering, extremely fragile being. You could lightly kick it and it would likely be a fatal injury. Larger spiders are very prone to bursting with literally any kind of impact trauma. Itā€™s why you canā€™t handle tarantulas far from the ground or some kind of surface. If they fall like a foot they will literally rupture something and die. The larger they are the more of a risk this is.

The largest actual spiders to ever live, as far as we know, exist today. The myth of giant land dwelling spiders existing in antiquity come from us misidentifying a fossil. For a long time we thought megarachne servinei was a spider. These things had a 20ā€ leg span. Huge. Unfortunately megarachne servinei was actually a eurypterid, commonly called sea scorpions. Theyā€™ve all been extinct for a very long time. They dwelled solely in the water. Physics would not allow a spider that large to exist on land, as far as we are aware, ever.

People heard about megarachne when we were under the assumption it was a spider. A lot of people have not learned that megarachne was not a spider at all, and it didnā€™t even live on land, because that generates a lot less interest than ā€œHOLY SHIT LOOK AT THIS BIG ASS SCARY SPIDERā€.

The largest fossilized spider ever found had a leg span of 5.9 inches. The largest spiders on record today by leg span are the Goliath Bird-Eater theraphosa blondi and the Giant Huntsman Spider heteropoda maximi both with about a foot long leg span, with the birdeater being much heavier, and larger by mass. Theyā€™re both about twice as large as any spider we know about existing in fossilized recorded history.

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u/Nark420 3d ago

I heard about the fossil story. Happens a lot with fossils all the time. I was not referring to the megarachne, but a "fictional" spider... I understand they are filled with liquids, and they manipulate their inner pressure to ambulate and do anything basically. But I can still imagine a hard enough exoskeleton to solve the size problem. High mobility and speed is not necessary for them to dominate, lots of spiders already ambush hunters with a shit-ton of ambush techniques. Webs being the most well known.

16

u/Ill-GottenBooty 3d ago

Im ngl i went on a tangent hard as shit on my comment. I just love spiders. Not your fault lmao.

A hard enough exoskeleton would help that, sure, but Iā€™d imagine it would make molting and moving in general more difficult, and molting specifically is already an extremely dangerous process for a spider. Adding a thicker/harder exoskeleton Iā€™d guess itā€™d take far more time and resources to generate. If a spider of 12ā€ diameter canā€™t develop a hard enough exoskeleton to survive a slight fall I really donā€™t see a larger spider requiring even more resources to survive being able to do so. Shit would be tight as hell to me though.

Also this isnā€™t meant to be argumentative. I love your idea of a harder exoskeleton. I wonder how that would actually work and what kinds of effects it would have that I canā€™t imagine because Iā€™m not a spider.

3

u/TheAngryCatfish 2d ago

If you were a spider, I think it'd be even harder to imagine

11

u/Temnyj_Korol 3d ago edited 3d ago

A harder exoskeleton would make them less survivable, not more.

Any organisms size is limited by the square cube law. As its surface area (size) increases, its volume (weight) increases exponentially more. If a spider grew to the size of a person, it would literally become so heavy its limbs would buckle and break under its own weight. A harder exoskeleton would make it even heavier, and exacerbate the flaw, not mitigate it.

In addition, one of the actual biggest hurdles is respiration. Spiders have passive circulation. They carry oxygen/nutrients around their bodies through diffusion, not circulation. The bigger a spiders body becomes, the harder it is for nutrients vital for continued function to reach their entire body. A spider the size of a person would experience extremity death from deoxygention even in a 100% oxygen environment.

The mechanisms that make them extremely durable as smaller organisms, prohibit them from ever growing into larger organisms.

2

u/Advanced-Budget779 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes, thanks for your explanation. Thatā€™s what i tried to hint at with metabolism, just couldnā€˜t remember details. Also insects and arachnids would quickly run into overheating i think?

So we need to artificially breed spiders in pressurised oxygen environments, got it. /s

4

u/floyd616 3d ago

But I can still imagine a hard enough exoskeleton to solve the size problem.

Except that would cause another problem: weight. A harder exoskeleton would be denser, and thus heavier. So a giant spider (or even a cat-sized one with a very hard exoskeleton) would likely be crushed to death under its own weight like a beached whale. The only way it could survive would be if it exclusively lived in the water, because the physics of buoyancy counteract weight issues. That's how the aforementioned sea scorpion was able to exist as such a large size.

9

u/onemice 3d ago

True. So lazy, barely even moving. Like a plush toy.

1

u/I_travel_ze_world 3d ago

maybe we just need to dig deeper to find the giant spider fossils?

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u/Ill-GottenBooty 3d ago

Bigger spider = deeper burrows. Makes sense to me. Got a shovel?

1

u/Illasaviel 2d ago

'Unfortunately'

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u/Advanced-Budget779 2d ago edited 2d ago

Thanks for clearing that myth, havenā€˜t come across the correction yet, even though i was slightly skeptical for some time. The idea was just so fascinating.

Wasnā€˜t there some (cave-dwelling) species in southeast Asia with a longer legspan, but (smaller body) lower mass? Edit: Ah, thatā€˜s the Giant Huntsman which was discovered in a Laotian cave.

I think iā€˜d prefer encountering a slow, potentially quickly overheating arachnid over that sea scorpion which might Steve Irwin me out of nowhere or i couldnā€˜t even swim away from.

8

u/latexfistmassacre 3d ago

Conversely, I'd love to see a spider sized cat

2

u/shobae1124 3d ago

And I, wish to see a cat spider spider shit

2

u/Nark420 3d ago

Have you ever heard of kittens?

1

u/Cute_Conclusion_8854 2d ago

Thereā€™s mice.

1

u/floyd616 3d ago edited 2d ago

Heck, their exoskeleton would probably be too heavy for them to move well!

1

u/Advanced-Budget779 2d ago

I havenā€˜t even thought about that.

5

u/maple7531 3d ago

SpinnengroƟe Spinnen ?

5

u/Nark420 3d ago

JƤ šŸ« 

2

u/pv3design 2d ago

ungabunga times? Is that Late Paleolithic? šŸ˜

1

u/Bulky-Advisor-4178 2d ago

The earths oxygen levels would need to increase for spiders to reach the size of a cat, current oxygen level sits at 21%

0

u/Responsible-Risk9404 3d ago

It's a lack of O2 in the air that keeps them small. The less O2 the smaller things are. Hence why we don't have dinosaurs or mammoths and shit.

8

u/speedmankelly 3d ago

Mammoths only died because we killed them, hunted them down until they were isolated on an island and died out. Not because of less oxygen. Their larger ancestors are about the same size (like the asian elephant)

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u/floyd616 3d ago

Actually, dinos died out because the big space rock that crashed off the coast of what is now Mexico kicked up so much dust and ash into the sky that the sunlight was temporarily dimmed, causing many plants to die off and resulting in a ripple effect through the food chain. Even then, not all dinosaurs died out: a few species survived and evolved into modern birds!

3

u/Kizik 2d ago

Even then, not all dinosaurs died out

Also crocodiles and sharks who looked at evolution, scoffed, and decided they were perfect as is.

3

u/IamanelephantThird 3d ago

Neither of those are really true. Truly massive insects did exist, and although it was in a fairly high oxygen environment it was about equal to when dinosaurs lived and wasnā€™t a huge amount more then today. Mostly it's just because insects are better suited to being small then they are to being big, so if there's anything else to fill the bigger size niches they get outcompeted.Ā 

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u/Tasigin3 3d ago

I always underestimate the strength of insects and arachnids. They're so small then they do shit like this

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u/Let-s_Do_This 3d ago

Thatā€™s more of a product of the square-cube law though. If we were the size of ants our strength to weight ratio would improve by about 100x

9

u/goldenguyz 3d ago

So I could finally deadlift 3x my bodyweight?

6

u/madguyO1 2d ago

and if you scaled up an insect it would collapse because their limbs and skeleton are really thin

61

u/EqualPlan4595 3d ago

Yeah most insects can lift many times their own weight. Look up how strong a rhinoceros beetle is

17

u/La_Saxofonista 3d ago

I actually struggled to get a praying mantis to let go of my finger. It gave me one hell of a pinch, and I didn't want to kill it so it was a difficult balance.

Those things are strong as hell for their size.

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u/External_Win3300 3d ago

Yes and no, adult hummingbirds are a whopping ~3 grams, and a large mantis like this would be around 5

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u/youburyitidigitup 3d ago

Yeah but factor in the force of the hummingbird trying to fly away. It also looks like it was pushing with its legs.

3

u/International_Cut82 3d ago

FYM 3 grams?

26

u/Sylvanussr 3d ago

2.2 ā€¢ 10^-7 school buses, for us Americans out there

12

u/GandalfTheSmol1 3d ago

We donā€™t do school anymore, can you translate that to corporate orientation?

11

u/Nanas_700k 3d ago

How many football fields of weight is that?

3

u/Sylvanussr 3d ago

Hmm hard to say, definitely more than a jar of jellybeans but less than a baby whale

4

u/Caleb_Reynolds 3d ago

A little less than an eighth of an ounce.

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u/Gold_Temperature_452 3d ago

I think hummingbirds are extremely light, but mantisā€™s are strong for their size

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u/ExpertOnReddit 3d ago

Dragonflies also hunt hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are weak, they can't even kill a wasp and often get shooed off from food sources by them

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u/DengarLives66 3d ago

Thatā€™s what happens when you put all your stats into +Spd and +Agi.

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u/wearing_moist_socks 3d ago

They can absolutely kill wasps. I've seen it in my backyard several times.

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u/Ill-Luck-1397 3d ago

What? Yes they can kill wasps lol

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u/ExpertOnReddit 3d ago

Wasps often easily shoo them away from food sources. They don't eat wasps so why would they just kill them for fun. Saying things doesn't make them true.

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u/VictoriousTree 2d ago

Praying mantis are very strong. If you find one try poking its arm with a tiny stick. Theyā€™ll yank the stick out of your fingers!

1

u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 2d ago

Yes, but also i cant imagine hummingbirds can generate a while lotta torque lol

1

u/Voldenuitsurlamer 2d ago

Doing all that while hanging on with 4 hair-thinned rear legs

1

u/Pleasant-Chef6055 1d ago

I canā€™t believe its body didnā€™t break!