The 1998 movie Godzilla and the 1986 movie Aliens each depict a large fictional
ID: 175187 • Letter: T
Question
The 1998 movie Godzilla and the 1986 movie Aliens each depict a large fictional female carnivore. The Godzilla female lives off a large prey population of humans and fishes, but has no assistance from others of her kind. In a few days she produces hundreds of 7 ft tall eggs, enough to fill Madison Square Garden. The Aliens female lives off a small prey population of a few dozen humans, is assisted by non-reproducing workers, and produces hundreds of large eggs in a few weeks. Comment on what is realistic and unrealistic about the life history traits and egg production abilities of each of these fictional animals. If they were real would they have long or short life spans? Why?
Explanation / Answer
The large size animals have very high metabolic rate and require large nutritional and ecological resources to sustain their body mass index. Such animals also produce less number of offspring and are normally positioned at the top of the food chain, making them the ultimate predator. Therefore, for the fictional animals like godzillas to produce large number of big-sized offspring would be unviable. Further, these animals would have short life spans.
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