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Kong Mirrors Real Evolutionary Paths
CNN has an article pointing out that, though King Kong may be a little extreme, evolutionary gigantism is not out of the question on remote islands. From the article: "There are many examples of what biologists term 'gigantism' on islands. These include the Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards which can be 10 feet long or more and weigh up to 500 pounds. Found on a few small Indonesian islands, the Komodo -- a recorded man-eater -- is in many ways as chilling as anything from Jackson's fertile imagination."
If anyone should get the credits for inventing King Kong, shouldn't it be Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace? Not to mention previous works by Jules Verne and others...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
That's funny, because even Australians know that spades and shovels are two different tools. A spade has a flat blade. A shovel is more like a scoop.
... and then they built the supercollider.
If anyone's interested, the principal described in the article is a special case of something called Foster's rule -- which you can google if interested.
In my opinion, more interesting than the giant species are pgymy species also created by the same effect. Pygmy Mammoths likely survived far longer than their gigantic counterparts before going extinct, as there is evidence of them being alive as recently as 5000 years ago on a few select islands. In fact, if I recall correctly, there is an egyptian painting which many suggest appears to be the pharoah or some lesser ruler recieving one as a gift. My details on this are a bit sketchy, so those genuinely interested should take their queries to google . . .
Some of you may also remember the somewhat controversial discovery of a species of pygmy hominid described as "hobbit-like" that was discussed on Slashdot about a year back -- those fossils were also from a rather isolated island . . .
Not necessarily. If you think about it in terms of architecture, it may be easier to understand. Look at your living room or bedroom. The ceiling is probably being supported by the four walls on each side. The room is small enough that the ceiling doesn't require support in the middle. If you scale the room a 100 times, the distance between the main supports (the side walls) would be too large to support the ceiling without additional support, either via poles or other means. I'd guess the same thing would apply to creatures. If you look at Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, he had trouble walking due to his size.
It's not the class, it's the size. According to the "island rule", islands don't provide the territory or food to support a diversity of larger animal species, especially very large animals such as elephants, so for the species that aren't killed off entirely, runts are favored. With the size, number, and variety of upper-level predators greatly reduced, smaller animals can grow larger (which provides advantages such as better body temperature control, more food and water storage, and being a more difficult kill for larger small predators) without risking as much lethal attention from predators.
There are exceptions and there is debate about the details of the island rule mechanism or whether it's even a valid idea at all, but the rule does NOT support the idea that a gorilla-sized animal would get even larger on an island. The factors that keep a large, top-tier animal from getting bigger - finite food supply, body design and that pesky square-cubed law - aren't likely to stop being issues on an island.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/eden/giants.html
The problem is the square/cube ratio. Double all linear dimensions, and volumes / weights go up by a factor of eight; areas only go up by a factor of four. So exactly doubling a creature would double the amount of weight per unit area, and the joints wouldn't be strong enough.
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100% pure freak
I love how nobody at Slashdot seems to understand sourcing an article.
CNN has an article ------------ No. Nope. Wrong.
CNN is running an article. ------------ YES!
CNN is running a Reuters article. Learn to understand the god damn difference. This article is running on dozens of other sites out there, yet you just gave CNN credit for it. If I were one of these AP, Reuters, AFP, UPI, or [insert wire service here] writers, I'd be annoyed when nobody could figure out how to properly attribute my work.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
Peter Jackson is certainly capable of originality, ever seen Bad Taste for example? (sick... yes, original... definately) I think if Jackson has been unoriginal then it's a malaise of the entire film industry. Don't forget that in 1999 (or was it 2000) they made Godzilla, an American remake of an American remix of a Japanese movie. The Matrix, a movie praised by many for originality was made by directors/writers who were perfectly aware that there was nothing original about the "unique" style of the movie (you can even buy a box set of the Manga movies that "influenced" the style of the Matrix).
It seems these days that all Hollywood makes is remakes or rehashings of old ideas. Part of the reason for this could be that decisions to finance or distribute films are made with calculators. Let's face it, it's easy to predict that a remake of a loved film or a loved idea is likely to be successful.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
HAH! Let's see now... The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. Yeah, real original.
Don't know about Kong, but LotR is actually fairly different from the book. It was by many considered to be "unfilmable" and indeed, many parts were cut (Tom Bombadil), changed & added (helm's deep, Galadriel, gollum's demise, sam turning back), transplanted (saruman's defeat, descripion of gray havens), reshuffled (entire timeline of second and third book) and so on.
Not only do I think a lot of originality went into the film, I think "LotR the movie" was a better movie than "LotR the book" would have been, but that "LotR the book" is the better book (not that there is a book version of the movie). For Tolkien, it's all about the ring, Sam and Frodo. The little love story between two side characters are tucked away in a little appendix, and it sort of fades to nothing with them each going their own way.
What Jackson pulled off what is almost "LotR meets Romeo & Juliet", and by god, if you manage to look past the fact that it wasn't what Tolkien wrote, it is damn good. Her choice between eternal life alone in the gray havens or to sacrifce everything for love that "can't be" touches many people who couldn't care less about a magical ring that gives superpowers and a bunch of AD&D monsters.
The only thing I found ridiculous in the LotR movies was that they were able to hold off the nazgul, which are supposed to be so very dangerous... yet some guy and a few hobbits defeat them? That really lacked some workaround.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I remember from my university biology classes why giant insects are impossible. Insects breathe through breathing pores, the air enters their body through the entire surface of their carapace. Apparently if they get over a certain size the core of their bodies would die of oxygen starvation in the time It takes the air to get into their sustem.
Now think about big mammals. Imagine the size of the heart that would be needed to pump blood against gravity into King Kong's brain. Imagine the muscles that would be needed to force enough air into the lungs. Gravity would collapse lungs over a certain size.
Now, I imagine giant reptiles would find it easier than giant mammals. Their metabolism requires less oxygen and thus the requirement to breate might be tolerable. Though I would hazard that the size of the biggest dinosaurs that did exist was probably the size of the biggest that could exist.
Additionally, it makes sense to me that of all animals an ape would be least likely to survive at that kind of size. Apes have the largest brains in land mammals (besides ours) and the glucose requirements for a brain like that would be phenomenal. So, King Kong could never actually exist.
But I will ignore that and go watch the movie anyway. After all Go-Jira is one of my favorite movies of all time.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
Blue whales are even bigger than crocodiles, but that doesn't make them the world's largest lizard either. This is because for most people an important requirement for being the world's largest lizard is being a lizard, and neither the blue whale nor the crocodile are lizards.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Actually on taking a further look it appears that Komodo's aren't a special case after all...just a couple months ago it was found that they have venom. Nevermind:( http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s15209 86.htm
I was listening to CBC Radio One yesterday morning to a discussion of the original 1930's King Kong movie, and it was mentioned that an original inspiriation for the movie was when a giant Komodo Dragon was brought to New York and died soon thereafter.
Let's see if I can find a reference for this. Ah, here we go...
"Elements of the 1933 Kong movie are based on the 1926 real-life expedition of William Douglas Burden, a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History," says Mitman, an expert on how animals are portrayed in popular culture.
"Burden traveled to Indonesia to film and capture the Komodo dragon, which he thought was the closest living relative of dinosaurs," he says. "When Burden brought back two live Komodo specimens and housed them in captivity in the Bronx Zoo, they died. Meridan Cooper, producer of the 1933 film version of Kong, wrote at the time, 'I immediately thought of doing the same thing with a giant gorilla.'"
The same correspondence indicates that Burden attributed the Komodo dragon's death to civilization. "This is why Cooper chose the Empire State Building and modern airplanes to kill off Kong. They were fitting symbols of civilization and the machine age that many feared were destroying nature," Mitman says.
He adds that the film's enduring appeal (the current one adds to the 1976 version and the 1933 classic original) might be linked to the restorative properties of an unspoiled, natural landscape.
Which were not imagined by Jackson either. But his film does a great job of re-imagining them.
There were two instances of lost footage from the original King Kong. One was the lost spider pit footage. As in Jackson's version, this scene would have occurred after the crewmen were tossed from the log. The surviving crewmen were attacked and killed by spider and crab like creatures.
It's not certain how much of this scene was filmed, but some pre-production drawings were definitely done. If it was filmed, it's likely that Merian Cooper destroyed the footage since he felt it broke the momentum of the film.
The other footage was the material that was censored in 1938. About 4 1/2 minutes were cut, some of which is replicated in Jackson's film. Kong drops a woman from a building after finding it's not Ann Darrow, pulls off some of Darrow's clothing, grinds a native into the ground with his foot and a little more of the same. This footage was later found in an uncensored print from the UK and restored.
The new 2-disc DVD has the restored 1933 version and includes some pretty cool extras -- apparently, Jackson decided to do a little side project while making Kong. He shot some stop-motion footage to recreate the techniques used to animate Kong, as well as recreating the lost spider pit scene. The extras show this recreation in detail, including Jackson's trip to the hospital to x-ray his original dinosaur puppet from the 1933 film so they can recreate the armature for it. It's worth a look if you're a fan of the original film.
Peter Jackson was famous in NZ long before he made LOTR, he made a lot of original stuff first.