
Why Whales Got So Big - ALee
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/why-whales-got-so-big/557213/?single_page=true
======
Avshalom
While it's obviously not a hard and fast law and I have gotten into arguments
with people way above my pay grade over that:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cope%27s_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cope%27s_rule)

not as an explanation of why whales are big, just a sort of interesting bit of
related history.

------
fouc
> the need to stay warm sets a floor for the body size of oceanic mammals,
> while the need to eat sets a ceiling. And the gap between them, Gearty
> found, is surprisingly narrow—and far more so than on land.

Interesting. If the range is so narrow for mammals, how did Dinosaurs get big?

~~~
masklinn
1\. The snippet you're quoting is about _marine_ mammals

2\. Dinosaurs were not aquatic

3\. The biggest aquatic reptiles were much smaller than modern whales
(plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs topped up around 15m long and 2 tons, which is
2x the length but 1/3rd the weight of a male Orca and nowhere near large whale
league)

4\. Dinosaurs weren't necessarily homeotherms and may have thus had a larger
(but lower) range of efficiency

5\. As the snippet notes the upper bound has to do with food limitations, and
large sauropods largely evolved ways to mow down ridiculous surfaces (and thus
amounts of food), which could have combined with higher plant growth/density
from higher O2 levels to put a higher cap on food issues

~~~
pfarnsworth
Your point of #3 is probably wrong. It’s harder to get fossils of aquatic
creatures so there’s likely a vast number of animals that we will never know
about. Saying with certainty that the biggest aquatic reptiles were smaller
than whales is a logical fallacy. Only the ones we know about are smaller but
we don’t know if there ever were, we might get lucky and find a fossil that is
larger.

~~~
michaelvoz
I don't think you are correct. Plenty of places that used to oceans and seas
have become land. This has given us access to aquatic fossils.

------
kneel
I wonder if this could be related to the size of pacific islanders. I remember
reading somewhere that is was somewhat of a paradox how people living on small
islands for so long became so large.

People from the pacific have been long been adept fisherman using techniques
such as deep diving spearfishing.

Pacific islanders are also enormous. They're overrepresented in the NFL for a
good reason. Anyone who has ever met a family of Samoans knows that these
people have very different genes.

~~~
Baeocystin
Such changes based on the unique environmental pressures of species living on
islands comes under the heading of Foster's Rule:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster%27s_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster%27s_rule)

Interestingly, species will both grow or shrink, depending on their initial
niche before becoming an island population, as well as local resource
availability.

------
hexane360
>And they evolved a foraging technique called lunge feeding, where they
accelerate into a shoal of prey, open their ballooning mouths, and suck in
vast volumes of water.

This is terrifying.

------
nikofeyn
interesting article, but there’s a small mistake. i don’t think it’s accurate
to say that sea otters spend a lot of time on land. i think it’s actually
fairly rare for them to go on land.

------
cparsons3000
So will humans continue to get bigger if we don't hit a world wide food
constraint?

~~~
fahd777
Did you read the article in its entirety? :)

------
aalleavitch
This article made me imagine mouse-sized dolphins, and now I am sad they do
not exist.

~~~
mkempe
Imagine having a flock of kitten-sized giraffes roaming about your house and
gently grazing on your plants.

------
mirceal
Know it’s an expression, but not sure how pay grade factors into an argument
like this.

~~~
tw04
It's borderline, but still makes perfect sense. In academia, more seasoned
professors generally fall into a higher pay grade. Hence he's argued with
people that in theory have more experience than he (or she).

