I'm a Pastafarian: Professor v Student

Ugh... These Facebook posts about atheist professors v. christian student is getting tiring. Really, I have to say that is just spreading ignorance. I feel disgusted because it discredits science, and more importantly, hundreds of years of scientific discoveries in the field of biology. Maybe it became a little bit personal because it directly attacks my field of science -- genetics and evolutionary biology.

This is my version on how the conversation would have gone if the professor is a real intellectually informed professor.

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Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, you believe in god ?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor : Is god good ?

Student : Sure.

Professor: Is god all powerful ?

Student : Yes.

Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to god to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But god didn’t. How is this god good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent.)

Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. Is god good?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Is satan good ?

Student : No

Professor: Where does satan come from ?

Student : From … god …

Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it ? And god did make everything. Correct?

Student :Yes

Professor: So who created evil ?

(Student did not answer.)

Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, who created them ?

(Student had no answer.)

Professor: Science says you have 5 senses (or as many as up to 20+ according to some scientists, or just 6 if you want to include common sense) you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son, have you ever seen god?

Student : No, sir.

Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your god?

Student : No , sir.

Professor: Have you ever felt your god, tasted your god, smell your god? Have you ever had any sensory perception of god for that matter/

Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.

Professor: Even with current scientific advancements we could not detect god with our scientific instruments. Yet you still believe in god?

Student : Yes.

Professor : According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your god doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.

Professor: Yes, faith. And that is the problem Science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Professor: Yes.

Student : And is there such a thing as cold?

Professor: Yes.

Student : No, sir. There isn’t.

(The lecture theatre became very quiet with this turn of events.)

Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

(There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)

Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?

Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light. But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man ?

Student : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

 Professor: Flawed? Can you explain how is that even related?

Student : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good god and a bad god. You are viewing the concept of god as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. (actually, neuroscience is just beginning to unravel the mystery of consciousness, it doesn't mean we cannot explain it in the future, just like how we wasn't able to explain lightning in the past but we can now.) It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one (this is just plain ignorant, the science of electromagnetism flourished during the late 19th century when experimentalists such as Tesla, Ampere, Fleming, Maxwell, Edison, etc. began to reveal the science behind it. Modern advancements in quantum physics gave further insight into electromagnetism, so much so that without at least a decade or more of studying in the field you wouldn't be able to fully understand it because there are just so much discoveries made in the past few decades .) To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it.

Professor: Alright, I'll grant you that. So?

Student: Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, we did evolve from the same ancestor as monkey, but not from a monkey. You see, this is a flaw in your part, with a little bit of reading you would have found out that not a single evolutionary biologist in the world  claimed that we evolved from monkey, we just happen to share the same common ancestor.

Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

Professor: As a matter of fact, yes. Evolution is the reason why so many pathogenic viruses and bacterias cannot be fully killed. Tiny variations among the micro-organisms allow some of them to survive the onslaught of anti-biotics and our body immune system and then reproduce by billions. That is the reason why in a few decades almost ALL of our medical antibiotics will be useless against bacterias if we do not discover new antibiotics soon. That is the reason why HIV is still running rampant in the human population, because the virus mutates and evolves so fast we cannot pin down an effective vaccine. But let's not dwell on something so small, but take a look at a more relatable example. Say for example a group of male lions are competing for lionesses, the strongest one wins out and gets to reproduce with the female. Because the male lion is strong, the offspring inherits some of its characteristics -- bigger paws, larger body mass, faster sprint speed, etc. This gives the offspring natural advantage over other lions and allows them to be able to produce more offspring. Slowly, they start to replace the whole population, and the population fully "evolves" when every lion in the population has the same advantageous characteristics. These are small changes, but given enough time, small changes accumulates into a huge change, but that would take thousands and sometimes millions of years. Humans do not have lifespan long enough to witness any major changes, that is why no major evolution has ever been observed, but microevolution happens everyday and scientists are very well aware of it.

[Student : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor. Are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?] (See above)

Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

Professor: With biology, science predicts that every normal functioning human has a functional brain. We may not have seen mine or yours, but so far the prediction holds true under all circumstances. With this in mind, I can be pretty sure that if I crack open my skull, we will find a brain inside. But we do not have to do that to see if you or I have a brain, scientific advancements gave us equipments that can observe a brain without any invasive technology. Instruments like CT scan and MRI allows us to see our brain activity. So yes, I have a brain, and you do to. But can we say the same about god?

Student : (silence)


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p.s. The student wasn't Einstein. Einstein believed in a non-personal god, a non-judeochristian god that is not interested in the affairs of humans. He wouldn't be so motivated to prove the existence of god, and he certainly wouldn't be so ignorant and have weak arguments. Please do research before posting these kind of stuff and spreading ignorance. 'Nuff said.



Till next time, cheers~

Taming Infinity

Warning: Math Content!

So the other day I saw this very cool mathematics trick. Suppose you have a divergent series (a group of numbers that adds up to infinity) that adds up like this:

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ...

Where the next number in the series equals to twice the value of the previous number.

It is pretty obvious that when you have infinite numbers in this series, this adds up to infinity right? Well, yes. But, it can also be mathematically proven that the whole series equals to -1.

What?

I know. Pretty mind-boggling stuff. But watch the video below, it explains how the series can become -1 by some mathematical manipulation



So, to reiterate what the video just said. Suppose you have the series

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ... .

Now the whole series will be the same if you multiply it with 1, right? Anything that is multiplied by 1 equals to the original value. Like this

1 * (1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ... )

It wouldn't change a thing. Now we all know 1 = 2 - 1, so we can substitude 1 in front of the series with (2 - 1), which then becomes

(2 - 1) * (1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ... ).

Now we expand the brackets by multiplying 2 and -1 in (2 - 1) separately with the series, which becomes

( 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ... - 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - ... ).

If you noticed, except for - 1, the other numbers on the right side can subtract the numbers with + sign. And in the end, you will be left with only -1!

So... 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + ... = -1!

Isn't it amazing? Although I do not know how does this apply in anything because I am not a mathematician, I still think it is very interesting how some problems in mathematics can have answers that are so counter-intuitive, and not to mention aesthetically simple too (at least that is what I think).



Oh well. Till next time, cheers~

Born This Way?

Hi there. Apologies for long absence but let's get straight into the topic of the day.

Today we are going to talk about the brain. Human brains.

Have you ever wondered, if some people are really born geniuses while some are born dull? (Shall be very careful about using the seemingly politically incorrect term "stupid", though it means just the same.) I'm sure you had at least once during the course of your life, wonders how the hell did that smart kid in your class breezed through the exams without much effort, while you struggle to even stay awake to read the first page on your exam topic. "He's just born smart," you said to yourself, conceding defeat.

You may had even come across this situation where you are in a peer study group, a friend of yours asks you a question, and the next half an hour was spent just to explain to him why 5+3(2*3) is not the same with (5+3)(2*3), without getting a bit of it into your friend's head. You find an excuse to go to the toilet, leaving him to bug the other friends. "He's just born stupid," you think to yourself, thinking why did you even agreed to study together with him in he first place.

And you wonder if your friend's was eaten by zombie.

Let me tell you something. You may be right. Some people may be born smart, while some may born with less capable brain.

If this notion makes you uncomfortable, or strike you as a little (or very) offensive, ask yourself, "why not?" Some people are born tall, some are born short; some born with long limbs, some have short stubby fingers; some people are born with darker skins, some are born with lighter skins. It makes perfect sense then, that intelligence could vary between people too, however we chose to define intelligence. Some people could really be born geniuses, with above average mental capability.

Notice here I had been very careful with my words, the use of words "could" and "may" says that I do not have a definite answer for you on whether absolute intelligence varies between people. But I do believe it to be very plausible, if not a sure fact. Unpublished studies have been done on this topic many times before, often treading on ethical minefield and deemed offensive, or biased, or baseless, or racist, or... you get the idea. It is a very difficult study to conduct, given that we people usually do not take personal insults that well. Imagine if you are born short and was stuck with the nickname "shorty" throughout your high school, now imagine if you substitute the words "short" and "shorty" with "stupid"s, how does that feel? Well, sucks I know.

So, studies have been done. Mostly unpublished for the fear of public repercussion, can't really be blamed when most societies would value equality highly, except this country where we still have constitutional discrimination. (You know, sometimes I really wonder if we really think of each other as equals, given the way we treat each other. Hmm... )

I have no published studies to back me up. Which is fine, as I am going to appeal to logical reasoning based on our current model of the theory of evolution. This will get dizzy so hold on.


Suppose we are evolved from earlier hominids (great apes), we have to agree that our ancestors were not as intelligent as we are. How do we know? Well, their brain size are smaller than ours, and they had no evident technological advances. We must take note though that the brain size is not an absolute measurement of intelligence, as we can see from elephants having bigger brains than we do. But gives a fairly good comparative measurement for members of the same evolution lineage and we shall take it as that.

Premise one - Ancestors not as intelligent as modern humans.



Now how does evolution work? It may look complicated, but it is actually many theoretical models unified by one simple concept - survival of the fittest. I am going add a bit of explaining on that - each individual of a species are slightly different from each other because we possess different genes, such as everyone is this world is unique in the sense that no two people share the same characteristics, personality, and identity.

How do we get different genes? Well, sometimes genes mutate when they are passed down from parents to offspring, it may be harmful, it may have no effect, or it may be beneficial to the offspring. The individual who gets the beneficial modification to the genes has an advantage over the other individuals of the species, it then has more chance to mate and reproduce more offspring possessing the same beneficial genes. Over time, the individuals with the beneficial genes will out-compete the ones that do not, replacing the population. Thus the gene gets fixed in the species.

That being said, we have to understand that evolution can only happen if there are genetic variations for a trait. That means, in other for a body part to evolve, the population has to have different versions of the body part for nature to "choose". For example, skin color may evolve easily because we have different versions of gene s coding for skin color; while evolving a whole new limb may be near to impossible because the genes coding for the number of limbs are fixed.

With this in mind, we can establish another premise.

Premise two - evolution of a trait can only happen if there are genetic variations within the population.


Here comes the punchline. If we put the two premises together, we must conclude then that for our ancestors to evolve better brains, some of our ancestors had to be on the duller side, while some had to be on the brighter side. If everyone was born equally smart back then, nature couldn't have selected on smarter brains and brain power couldn't have made any improvement down many generations. But we are in fact smarter than our ancestors, therefore surely they are not all born with equal intelligence then?

It is possible that the variation persisted till today, although there is also a possibility that we have a reduced variation, if not fixed. It could be as varied as skin colors, or it could be as fixed as the number of fingers. Both are probable, but if daily observations were to go by it would probably lean more to the skin color side of the scale.

This does not mean however that we may still evolve into smarter human beings in the future even if there are variation in intelligence. Simply because our society has grown to the point that everyone, regardless of the level of intelligence, gets basic rights that ensure one's survival. People with less than average brain capability do not have selection pressure against them like our ancestors, they get to live and get married and have kids too. And the genes will swim around in the gene pool with other versions of the gene and codes for smarter brains. We may have already reached the point where our raw brain power will not grow on natural selection anymore.

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Although it is quite clear that I do believe that some people are more blessed than others, I do not advocate discrimination based on intelligence any more than I advocate racism. What am I trying to achieve by telling you this? Well, frankly speaking, I do not know. Maybe I think, it would be better if we can all accept the fact that not everyone is equally fast at learning and do not take it too personally. After all, if it's in the genes, we can't do much to change a thing about it. That doesn't mean though, that we should all stop our work on something altogether just because it takes a long time to accomplish it; we just have to try our best and if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. Accept the fact that you are born this way.



Till, next time. Cheers~

We Are Empty Spaces

Warning: Science Content

Let me tell you something very beautiful. Yes. Beautiful is the word. What if I told you that... We are all empty spaces? It's not a metaphor, it's not a figurative speech. It is what it is, we are all empty spaces...



Look at your hand. What do you see?

You see your fingers, your skin..

Delve deeper. What do you see?

The creases on your palm, finger prints.

Go on... What do you see?

The epidermis of the skin... Skin tissues?

Cells... Thousands of them. No, millions of them.

There is the phospholipid membrane surrounding the cells, enclosing the inner cytoplasm.

Proteins, hurling everywhere randomly within the fluid cytoplasmic cavity; Enzymes, the intricate machinaries of the cell, working as if they are sentient; DNA, the recipe of life, the blueprint to complex biochemistry, unwinding and duplicating in a blink of an eye.

Billions of atomic bonds were formed, and broken simultaneously. New molecules assembled every fraction of a second.

They are nothing more than just the exchange of electrons in a vast bargaining atomic market. Transactions made in the form of charged currency. Stormy, unpredictable movements of the electrons, orbiting the tranquil nucleus in the center.

But nay, not all nucleus are as still as the eye of the electron hurricane. Some nucleus of massive radioactive atoms gets split into fragments due to unstable fluctuations. 

What lies beyond? Are there nothing but protons and neutrons and electrons that makes us? Or are there a far more fascinating constellation of smaller particles, awaiting for our quantum explorers to discover?

DNA, secret ingredient to life.

Ahem. Forgive me for the failed Carl Sagan imitation. But you get the point. Point is, what is smaller than the (supposedly taught by teacher as the smallest particles of) proton, neutron, and electron. In this post, I shall attempt to explain away some introductory basics of particle physics, and then naturally we will converge to the title of this post of "we are empty spaces", where everything will (sort of) be clear to you.

Let me start by telling you this: your high school chemistry teacher was wrong. It was a conspiracy all this while. They thought you were incapable of understanding something deeper, so they stopped at telling you that protons, neutrons, and electrons are all there is.

Well, not so much of a conspiracy lah. But yes, you/they were wrong. The books were wrong. The examination papers were wrong. Wrong wrong WRONG!

Ok. With that aside. I shall start by telling you the current understanding of particle physics.



What are fundamental particles? Fundamental particles are the smallest observable particles, they are smaller than protons and neutrons, which essentially are made up of these fundamental particles. Currently, physicists think that these fundamental particles are the basic ingredients of the matters in the universe. If you do not know what does matter mean, just cut out that part and read: basic ingredients of the universe. That should serve the purpose for now. Note that I said "smallest observable particles" because these particles can be detected in lab, however it is unknown if they are made up of smaller things.

To keep things simple. There is just three types of fundamental particles you need to know:

Leptons, Quarks, and Bosons

That is it. No sweat right? Now allow me to explain further.


Leptons are... well, leptons... Maybe I should try another way. Electron is part of the family of leptons, which has particles that has either 0 charge, or -1 charge. There is no need to know about other leptons other than the electron.

Quark Family

Quarks are the particles that make up protons and neutrons. There are 6 types of quarks, all with either +2/3 charge or -1/3 charge. So basically a combination of 3 quarks form protons or neutrons depending on the sum of the charges of the quarks.

How quarks form bigger particles.

Bosons are kind of difficult to grasp, they are known as the carrier of the fundamental forces. If I may put it this way, photon is a boson. If you don't know what is a photon, a photon is a light particle; light consists of photon particles. Light as you know it, is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force. Before I fry your brain, let just stop at bosons are the particles that creates electromagnetic force, weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravitational force. Without bosons, we will not have these forces, and quarks and leptons will just exist without doing anything to each other.



Interaction between these particles form the very fabric of our universe. Bosons give rise to nuclear forces that allow quarks to stick together in groups of 3, forming neutrons and protons. The nuclear forces created by bosons also bind neutrons and protons together within a nucleus of an atom. Electrons whirl around the nucleus due to charge attraction.

But even though it seems to you that the proximity of these interactions are very close, it is not. These particles interact at distances so far apart, thinking about it will melt your brain. Okay maybe not so serious, but almost.



Let me give you an idea.

Imagine you have quarks and electrons, almost similar in size (in reality quarks are at least 10 times smaller than electrons, but let us just imagine they are the same size). Let us give them a size in metric measurement of, let's say, 1 millimeter across. How big is 1 millimeter? It is more or less the thickness of 10 pieces of your normal printing paper.

If quarks are 1mm across in size, the protons and neutrons they form will be about 1 meter across! Imagine, 3 quarks of 1mm across occupying a space of 1 cubic meter! What is in between them you ask? Well, nothing! Between them is nothing but empty spaces.

There is more. Putting together the protons and neutrons, you will get a nucleus 10 meters across, all made up of quarks just 1mm long at most.

It does not end here, the next is the most mind-boggling.

Now we have the electrons, orbiting the nucleus. The extent of electrons' orbit around the nucleus is the boundary of the atom. So the further the electron orbits around the nucleus, the bigger atom we have. Typically, at this scale, the entire atom will be 100 kilometers across. Yes, you have not read me wrong, it is one-hundred kilometers! Again, imagine all these are made up of quarks and electrons about 1mm across. What is in between? Empty spaces.

An illustration of the nucleus and atom.

If you want to calculate, the percentage of the volume taken by these quarks and electrons are so close to zero we might as well say that the universe is 100% empty spaces.



We are empty spaces...



But we do not perceive it that way. We can see things! We can touch and feel things! So how can the universe be almost vacuum?

The answer, my friends, lies mainly in one of the fundamental forces of physics - The Electromagnetic Force. But that is for another day.

Electromagnetism - The Beautiful Force

Till next time.



Cheers~



p.s. Extra freebies for nerds, check this out! http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~dfehling/particle.gif

Size Does Matters

Have you ever wondered, why are there so little insects in the colder regions? Or why you have a 8.5 meter long intestine? Or why hasn't a giant cockroach invade your city already just so that you do not have to take that school exam of yours?

"I'm in yo city, eating yo lunchboxes."

Turns out they all have one unifying factor, that is, SIZES! Forget what the experts said, size does matters.

Except for your favorite Happy Feet.

Cold regions that have eternal winter such as the arctics and antarctica are devoid of animals that are smaller than a fox. In fact, if I may generalize (of course, there are always rare exceptions in biology), reptiles and amphibians are no where to be found in areas of freezing temperature, so are birds and insects (Birds and insects usually migrate to warmer places during winter). This is because bigger animals are better at keeping warmth within their body than smaller animals. How exactly?

Uh... Don't try this at home?

You have an intestine that is about 5 times longer than your height. But why do you need an intestine that long. Well, the high school biology answer to that is just to increase, surface area for food absorption. You already know that. But then again, why do you need increased area for food absorption? Worms have a straight gut that is as long as its body, it didn't need an intestine that is as long as a spaghetti.

And why don't we have giant cockroaches, if not at least as big as our arm or something? Or let us expand the question and ask, why don't we have giant insects the size of a cat or a dog? Why not giant human beings 50-foot tall? Is Godzilla possible?

Alright, I hope I raised enough questions to keep your attention. I will explain away the answers to these questions, with biological principles and some maths (not much, you do not have to be an Asian to understand them :D ).


The animal kingdom, I must say, has to be one of the weirdest thing to happen to the universe. To have matters (atoms and molecules) coming together to form reproducing lifeforms is one thing, to evolve into a being that are mobile is another miracle altogether! Okay, that has nothing to do with the topic today, but putting that aside, I want to point out another thing to you. If you noticed, of ALL the animals that exists today, none of them come in the wrong sizes, they are all just the right size, right shape, right proportion, just like the story of Goldilocks. Now what do I meant by that?

Suppose you have a gazelle (a deer-like animal native to Savannah), you increase the size of the gazelle by ten times but keeping the proportion of the body the same, what would happen? Immediately, the gazelle's bone will crack under the enormous weight of its body, but it doesn't happen when it is just as it is, that is - just the right size. On the contrary, if you shrink the gazelle down by the factor of ten, it won't be crushed by its weight (in fact the gazelle will feel itself so much more lighter), but again it will not survive for long, because its body is inefficient at functioning on an animal that can fit on your palm, it will need so much more food (I'm talking about in relation to the body, not the absolute amount. Of course, a mouse-sized gazelle eat less than a real gazelle), and its body will be incapable of producing enough energy.

This biological principle pertaining body sizes is really based on simply mathematics. Now let me show you, with a more relatable example. Humans are on average about 5-foot tall (we shall take the average at 5-foot for the sake of simplifying calculations). Let's say we try to increase our size by ten times in all dimensions, that is - height, width, and breadth; we will have a human being that is 50-foot tall, has the same body shape and proportion as a human who is at normal height. According to mathematics, although the human had only increased his height by ten times, he have about a thousand times increase in volume!

10 fold increase in height, width, and breadth = 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 fold increase in volume!

Now let's make the assumption that the density of the human does not change when he "grows", we can deduce that a thousand times increase in the volume means a thousand times increase on his weight! The person now has to bear a weight 100 times more than he have to compared to when he is normal.

1000x increase in weight / 10x increase in size = 100x more weight to carry!

Let's not forget about our bones. Our bones of course, will have a thousand times increase in volume too, but only a hundred times increase in the cross-section area. Put that into equation and we have:

1000x increase in weight / 100x increase in bone cross-section area = 10x more pressure on bones!

Incidentally, our strongest bones (femur) breaks at this amount of pressure. So, can you imagine how much exoskeleton strength does a cockroach has to have if it were the size of a building? It is simply not economical.

Now, I will not present an argument for reduced efficiency when our size is reduced proportionally. Simply because 1) There are no maths for it as a far as I know, and 2) It is not known whether we can survive is we downsize all our dimensions by 10 times. However that does not mean biologists do not have a case for it. We can see all around us, most tiny animals have very simple systems that keep them alive, which leads to a hypothesis that simple systems are more efficient and easier to manage at small scale. The realm of mammals and complex organ systems ends as soon as it reaches the size of your thumb, anything smaller beyond that are simpler lifeforms. Therefore, I suspect that complex systems are being selective against in favor of simpler systems that function more efficiently in small-scale organisms.



Speaking of small animals, let's take a look at another organism. This time, the humble earthworm. Simple, straight-forward, the earthworm is basically just a mobile tube (or hollow cylinder, whichever you prefer). It has no brain, just some basic neuron that acts according to stimuli received; a straight gut, surrounded by a layer of muscle, no bones, no flashy displays, just essentials that keep it alive and moving.

The beauty about earthworms and other similar-sized organisms is - they do not require a specialized respiration and digestive system. Small creatures have large surface area compared to their volume, we say in biology they have large surface-area-to-volume ratio, therefore they can have enough oxygen just by simple diffusion through their skin, the oxygen intake will be sufficient and can be delivered to all body cells. Ditto to the digestive system, they have a low body volume, which means less cells to feed, that is why they only have a straight gut, not the winded and elaborated ones we and other larger animals have.

Nom nom nom

But if you increase the size of the earthworm to, let's say, the size of an anaconda. Not only it will require to eat faster than this guy eats his hot dogs just to get enough fuel, it will suffocate because the oxygen just can't diffuse fast enough to reach all body cells to keep it alive. (Not to mention it will poo as much as it eats)

That is when your 8.5 meters intestine comes in. With more surface area to absorb nutrient, you do not have to eat that much just to extract enough energy to power your body. By the time the food reaches the exit of your gut system, it probably have very little nutrients left to be absorbed. (I have heard somewhere that your feces still have enough nutrients to nourish you for a few days, but let's just leave that thought right there.)

That being said though, it doesn't mean that being small is good because we need only to maintain systems with low upkeep, or being big is worse because of the complications that are more likely to occur on our body systems. But there is one thing that definitely gives an advantage to bigger animals and that is body temperature control.



Let us go back to the question on why aren't there any small animals in cold climates. The explanation given above is that bigger animals are better at keeping warmth in their body than smaller animals. True. But let's put it in mathematical terms and see why.

Returning to the principle of surface-area-to-volume ratio, I had mentioned that smaller animals have larger surface-area-to-volume ratio (let's call it SA/V ratio here onwards). It means, smaller animals have more surface area per volume of body, or to every unit of volume of the body, there are more surface area. That is not the case for bigger animals, though, they have a smaller SA/V ratio. In other words, the surface area of the bigger animals are smaller in relative to smaller animals.

This brings a great advantage to the bigger animals in colder conditions. Because let me tell you this, almost all of the energy extracted from our food goes into producing body heat to keep our essential organs working, which means almost all the energy lost from our body is in the form of heat through the skin. Therefore, when each unit volume of the body is producing equal amount of heat, the animals with smaller SA/V ratio (big animals) are going to lose heat through the skin slower compared to animals with larger SA/V ratio (which in this case is the small animals).

That is why, small animals tend to die rather easily in freezing weather, because their body loses heat faster than they can generate heat. To compensate for this disadvantage, smaller animals have to eat a lot. How much? Imagine this, a mouse has to eat about a quarter of its own weight daily. Convert this into the human scale, it's like us eating about 15-17kg of food per day! And all of that food goes into producing enough body heat to survive. So, economically speaking, it is better for smaller animals to migrate to warmer areas than to live searching for extra food each day in cold areas, a herculean task given the scarcity of food in colder regions. (Some smaller animals hibernate in winter, which uses less energy and therefore conserving the energy.)



So, is it better to be a smaller or a larger animal? There is no correct answer to that. We should all appreciate the fact that evolution is a very beautiful thing itself. And that all animal lineages that survived long enough passing the test of time, to this date, should be considered a success story in their own right.

With that I shall end my sloppily organized and rather incoherent attempt at writing a science article. I shall hope that you will leave this post with a little more understanding about the biological principles behind the body sizes. And your homework for today is, answer one of the unanswered questions above. Is Godzilla possible? If so, what kind of body systems must it develop to survive as an organism?


Till next time, cheers.