Who’s to say that this photo was taken on the thumb of a really large giant human?
We need a banana for scale
Smöl
Submitted 2 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/21349825-7508-46f3-b643-9b9e4c8c1f1b.jpeg
Comments
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
SethTaylor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People are way way bigger than this gecko and still some don’t have a brain.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They should see the wizard!
SuiXi3D@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
petersr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Now consider a fruit fly. I know it might not be as complex but it is still alive and has a heart and some kind of brain.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i thought they don’t have lungs or a circulatory system or anything. “breathe” through their exoskeleton. brain maybe, but some systems missing. i accept i could be wrong.
petersr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are probably right. But some systems of animated life must there. And at that size it is quite impressive.
Lembot_0004@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
How many do you need for a burger?
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Is this one of the lizards you can keep as pets? Can I have a giant wall sized glass tank just absolutely full of these little derps living their lives and eating stuff and generally being happy?
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
brandon@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Rotifers are multicellular animals and have organs, and they are a lot smaller than this.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
One of???
scottrepreneur@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Plz show smaller. Will wait
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
it’s got room in its bones for marrow.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
IMO, this kind of amazement mostly points to humans not really unserstanding how tiny the building blocks of reality are. Even the “massive” protein molecules your body uses with hundreds of thousands of atoms in them, tens of thousands of amino acid chains, can fit many on the head of a sewing needle.
Titin has over 30,000 amino acids in it, and barely gets over 1um in length. That’s barely wider than a sharp razor blade’s edge, and they’re orders of magnitude sharper than most knives.
The scale of the world is crazy, and we are already giants in it.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Hm, I disagree. Most complex animals we know are kinda big. When you get to the size of this lizard, usually we talking about insects that are little more than muscle automata. When we think of lizards, we think of of animals with a level of complex personality we can identify with.
When something complex is this minified, it is amazing. If you don’t think so, maybe you lost some sense of awe in life.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Again, it is amazing … but because we cannot fathom how big it still is.
I’d give you a Vulkan, “neat, curious even, but not mind blowing”, as to what I mean a truly aware response would be.
It’s neat, but if you’re aware of the developmental stages of even just human babies, it’s really not surprising nor unique as to how small something with such differentiated parts is.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
i think you vastly underestimate the complexity and engineering in insects and microorganisms
voodooattack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Regarding Titin’s full name
I find this extremely amusing.
ButteryMonkey@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I wanted to listen to it, so I went looking.
And I am wildly disappointed that the only human-read video I could find is a freakin’ ASMR video. I can’t watch that shit.
The computer-read versions make it sound like it would make a great tongue twister memory sort of thing. I’m honestly a tiny bit surprised it hasn’t been done.
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That’s, like… half a novel long.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Yeah, but its not made out of undifferentiated proteins, its made out of cells.
A human red blood cell is about 6.2 μ wide, so if we assume this little guy is 1.5 cm long that’s only 2420 human red blood cells from tip to tail.
IMO that’s pretty amazing and you should be amazed.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Nah. You are assuming a red blood cell is a common size. It’d be like aliens coming to Earth, seeing Humans, and assuming life’s average scale is that of a human on this planet.
There is a MASSIVE scale of difference between cells of different animals. Some cells can be seen with the naked eye. That doesn’t magically mean other animal cells have to also be large.
There are entire living organisms that are smaller than Titin. Several species of eukaryotes are smaller than Titin, and they’re single celled orgsnisms by definition. A single celled organism smaller than a human blood cell by an order of magnitude.
That says nothing of prokaryotes, which are also celled organisms that are multiple orders of magnitude smaller still.
Again, it’s amazing only because you assume humans aren’t fucking insanely huge. An understandable perspective for sure, but a wrong perspective none the less.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
“What would it feel like to rule over a vast empire composed of literally billions of cells?”
Yeah, ask yourself.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Try literally trillions. Billions is literally several orders of magnitude less than reality.
Again, most people literally cannot fathom the scales. Not as an insult, but to point out the literal scale.