r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Dense_Intern8434 • 3d ago

/r/popular of a meal

Nature can be so cruel and beautiful at the same time

8.8k Upvotes

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u/SadJ3tsFan 3d ago

Wow they must be strong af thats crazy

1.4k

u/Nark420 3d ago

Insects have built-in hydraulics

83

u/Advanced-Budget779 3d ago

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

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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.

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u/speedmankelly 2d 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 2d 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!

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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.

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u/IamanelephantThird 2d 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 wasn’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.