12-21-2005, 09:44 PM
At this juncture I feel it is important to waste everyone's time with some hard science -- you know, in the vein of "The Physics of Star Trek."
The Siberian tiger is the largest of the cat species and can weigh up to 800 pounds. It is known to occupy a territory of up to 4000 square miles per tiger. This is because it takes a lot foliage to support the herbivores that the top predators feed upon.
T-Rex, by comparison, weighs in at around 15,000 pounds. So a single T-Rex would need a land area of, conservatively, 15 X 4000 = 60,000 square miles. In this movie, we saw 3 T-Rexes and at least 2 more top carnivores, ignoring the smaller raptors (King Kong is a herbivore, so he doesn't factor in). These 5 top carnivores, by themselves, would require a land mass of 300,000 square miles.
That's over 500 miles by 500 miles.
If you assume a lot more predators and scale it up accordingly, we're talking about a substantial island.
What a remarkable stroke of bad luck for Kong and beauty to encounter five top predators within a few hundred yards of each other.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled brainwaves.
--cranefly
P.S. I totally agree about Jack Black's obsession with money. If instead his obsession had been filmmaking (the previews actually presented him in this way), he would have come across far better, improving the movie dramatically. As it stands, I was angry and resentful when Jack Black got to stand over Kong at the end and explain to everyone what actually killed him. Because by that point Jack Black wasn't qualified to feed a millipede.
The Siberian tiger is the largest of the cat species and can weigh up to 800 pounds. It is known to occupy a territory of up to 4000 square miles per tiger. This is because it takes a lot foliage to support the herbivores that the top predators feed upon.
T-Rex, by comparison, weighs in at around 15,000 pounds. So a single T-Rex would need a land area of, conservatively, 15 X 4000 = 60,000 square miles. In this movie, we saw 3 T-Rexes and at least 2 more top carnivores, ignoring the smaller raptors (King Kong is a herbivore, so he doesn't factor in). These 5 top carnivores, by themselves, would require a land mass of 300,000 square miles.
That's over 500 miles by 500 miles.
If you assume a lot more predators and scale it up accordingly, we're talking about a substantial island.
What a remarkable stroke of bad luck for Kong and beauty to encounter five top predators within a few hundred yards of each other.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled brainwaves.
--cranefly
P.S. I totally agree about Jack Black's obsession with money. If instead his obsession had been filmmaking (the previews actually presented him in this way), he would have come across far better, improving the movie dramatically. As it stands, I was angry and resentful when Jack Black got to stand over Kong at the end and explain to everyone what actually killed him. Because by that point Jack Black wasn't qualified to feed a millipede.
I'm nobody's pony.