How Plausible Is Godzilla?
A Scientific Look At Gojira
I’m a huge Godzilla fan. I watched a lot of the old Toho films as a kid. I collected Godzilla figurines for a while, and they’re still around here somewhere. I even have an old Godzilla t shirt that I’m too sentimental to throw away, although it doesn’t fit me anymore. I also have an interest in biology and physics. And one question I have asked myself is, how plausible is Godzilla? Could Godzilla exist in the real world?
There are a few challenges to an organism of that size existing.
Too much heat!
In the first place, there’s a thing called the cube-square law. Not to get too deep into the physics, but the cube-square law means that, as an object gets bigger, it gains volume faster than surface area. Exponentially faster! Think of inflating a balloon: the balloon gains exponentially more volume each time you blow into it, but it gains much less surface area. Because of a whole lot of thermodynamics that I won’t go into, that means that it’s very hard for big creatures to lose excess heat. They tend to overheat and die. That’s why elephants have those big flappy ears: the ears are thin, so that’s a whole lot of extra surface area to radiate heat. It’s the same principle as your computer’s heat sink.
Godzilla merchandise is everywhere, such as this Godzilla t shirt
One way that Godzilla could get around this would be if his bones had a structure similar to foam. Instead of just a solid chunk of bone, Godzilla’s bones could be full of holes. A lot of dinosaurs had bones like that. Sauropods, such as brontosaurus, had bones full of holes, for example. When you have bones that are full of holes, to the point where the bones are like soap, it makes you lighter. It also makes it easier to beat the cube-square law, because it prevents you from taking up so much volume, and makes it easier to radiate heat. This would also allow Godzilla to remain and support itself despite its immense size.
(Of course, it depends on specifically what size we’re talking about here. Godzilla’s size varies radically between adaptations!)
Big boy’s gotta breathe
Another issue with animals at that size is respiration. A creature Godzilla’s size could never exist with mammalian lungs. It just wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen. Extinct animals, such as the wooly mammoth and other proboscidae (elephant-like animals) were already at the upper size limit for mammals, and they’re much smaller than Godzilla. So any creature his size would need to have better lungs. We can fix that by giving him lungs like a bird. Bird lungs have air sacs surrounding them, and they have a complicated respiration system that efficiently diffuses air throughout their bodies. It is thought that dinosaurs were able to grow to such an immense size partially because of their bird-like respiratory systems.
Godzilla is fictional. Creatures like him exist in Godzilla movies and on Godzilla t shirts. Something exactly like him couldn’t exist in the real world. But if you get creative, he looks a lot more plausible than you might think at first!
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