Comment on qt π
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 day agoSquare-cube law means that as they get bigger they need to hunt less (lower rate of heat loss per kg of birb) and get less powerful compared to their size
Comment on qt π
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 day agoSquare-cube law means that as they get bigger they need to hunt less (lower rate of heat loss per kg of birb) and get less powerful compared to their size
Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 day ago
I doubt such a law is a linear function, and probably plateaus at some point. I wouldn't consider large birds even outside raptors as weak because they are big, and dinosaurs? Maybe clarify what you mean as "less powerful".
Even outside the bird family, what about huge animals like orca, elephants, rhinos?
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 day ago
I meant weaker per kg of body weight
arctanthrope@lemmy.world 1 day ago
the square-cube law is the fact that a larger object has a lower ratio of surface area to volume than a similarly-shaped smaller object; i.e. as the scale of an object increases linearly, its surface area increases as a square function, and its volume increases as a cubic function.
thermodynamically, this means an object twice the size has 4 times the heat transfer (which occurs at the outer surface), but 8 times the heat capacity (since heat is stored throughout the volume). so it’s heat loss is by raw numbers greater, but lower as a percentage of the total, i.e. the internal temperature is more stable