Biology of Giants

hey guys I'm back I first want to apologize for the massive break between videos I'm much busier than I'd hope and sadly that has made my video output slowed down to a trickle so I'm sorry I'm trying my hardest to get videos out where I can so yeah anyways I'd like to do something different before we get back to the final part of my 10,000 BC series it's been a long time since I talked about speculative biology and speculative evolution and I'd love to take another fictional organism and suggest a what-if scenario in which they could exist and how and discuss all the interesting biomechanical and evolutionary factors that would go into that and because I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones I decided to make this one about giant humanoids this is the biology of giants giants colossi and titans stories and legends of giant humans of great strength and size can be found in basically every culture around the globe the most famous of them is likely the gargantuan Philistine Goliath of Gath who is recorded in the Hebrew biblical book of Samuel in the legend he is said to be one of the greatest warriors in the ancient world whoever the future Israelite King David remarkably was able to slay and decapitate him nonetheless the exact height of the Giant is uncertain because although modern and more recent copies of the book of Samuel state his height was six cubits and a span or nine feet nine inches or about three meters the oldest copies such as the Dead Sea Scrolls the first historian Josephus in the 4th century suffusion manuscripts all claim Goliath was considerably shorter and had a much more realistic height standing four cubits and a span 6 feet 9 inches or about two meters about as tall as james comey and was still considered extremely tall ford's time period the almost ten-foot tall height was probably a much later change I did the result of a translation error over the centuries or an intentional revision or alteration to make alliance defeat much more fantastical and epic whatever the answer is it is lost to history other cultures speak of giants as well one's much more forgotten there were the cyclopses of the Greeks who lived on Islands and were fond of cannibalism there was Grendel of the anglo-saxons a beast like bean that was said to be very terrible to look upon there was the data of bucchi of Japan a colossal yokai that posed his mountains while they slept and countless others even the first stories ever recorded by humans into contained a Giants the epic of gilgamesh records the story of the great sumerian king of Uruk as well as a giant demigod in hero Gilgamesh as well as his adversary the giant demon of the cedar forest whom Baba whose face in some translations was like stirring and Tess teens and whose penis was a venomous serpent both whom Baba and Gilgamesh were very prevalent in early lore mythology's and can be considered the very first Harry Potter in Baltimore or Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of the ancient world depictions of both Giants can be found everywhere and dig sites and temples in Mesopotamia Babylon and Sumer the ones canonical biblical book of Giants even mentions Gilgamesh and Humbaba in passing as two of the giant Nephilim or the offspring of lesser gods or Angels and mortal women that existed before the flood this book was once considered just as much a part of the Bible as Exodus or Genesis but has since been disowned one can only imagine how interesting Sunday school teachings about whom Abba would be with so many stories of Giants tracing all the way back to ancient history one might think these beans might have even existed but in contrary to mini Photoshop pictures claimed archaeological and scientific evidence has so far shown no indication that supports the existence of any of these giant human myths and it is likely they were exaggerations of the truth if not based on imagination entirely gigantism was in fact often used to either glorify someone as the descendant of the gods or demonize them as an aberration against nature so it's no surprise some people would try to make them up and regardless of how fictional they are to this day Giants still exist in our stories and culture in our books in our video games in our movies and in our TV shows when you think about it Giants are as much a part of our culture today as they used to be there's just something about massive towering versions of ourselves that inspire awe and fear into us but I'd like to still ask what if humans have all to a much greater height in size what would they look like and what implications would that have on our biology Anatomy and evolution well that's why I'm here isn't it okay so first off is if humans are even capable of reaching giant Heights the tossed a humanoid ever got in all of history that was verifiable by science was 8 foot 11 inches the man's name was Robert Wadlow and he lived for only about 22 years from the early to mid 1900s Robert was massive and towered high above literally every human being that ever existed that we know of anyway his unusual height as is the case stand most giant humans was due to an overproduction or hypersecretion of human growth hormone produced by a tumor in his pituitary gland which resulted in abnormal growth from childhood and typically well into adulthood the hormone is over produced and as a result does not tell the body to stop growing at a certain point as it does in normal humans in fact some Giants don't even show signs of stopping growth before their death Robert for instance would have grown taller it might have become the real version of the fantastical nine-foot Goliath if it weren't for his death additionally gigantism seems to sometimes be passed down genetically as a mutant gene so it's certainly possible for a branch of humans if it be Homo sapiens or our close relatives of the same genus to possibly break off and evolve a greater height I'm just gonna say one of 10 to 14 feet tall or about 4 meters like in Game of Thrones the only issue is staying alive to reach it the main problem with giants is the fact that the human body is specifically evolved for a certain height limit probably somewhere around 2 meters or 6 foot 5 inch is where Anatomy starts to reaches physical limit our specific proportions organs musculature bones etc are best suited for an average human height anything higher than that and our body is put under much more stress and starts to break down and that is why so many giants the vast majority of them are riddled with health issues and sadly why they typically die so young almost all giant humans suffer from a myriad of circulatory skeletal and musculature issues with most of these stemming from the fact that their heart is under an extreme amount of stress than normal and must work double if not triple if not more to fight against the pull of gravity and simply the large amount of space they must transport blood to another big problem is the massive amount of extra weight put on muscles and bones the square-cube law has to do with the relationship between volume in an area of a shape I'm simplifying it but all you need to know is that when a shape increases its size let's just say this cube doubles its height that doesn't mean the cubes volume is doubled its volume in actualities eight times as big as it was earlier the volume of an object grows much faster than its height the square-cube law is especially significant when we are discussing giants as it is important to understand that with each and every foot we increase to the human honey the way to this hypothetical human increases exponentially for instance let's just say we have a 6-foot tall man who weighs 170 pounds using the square-cube law if we wanted to have a proportional human who was 10 feet tall he would weigh somewhere around 8 times as much that massive amount of weigh is now putting pressure on bones that only evolved to support a weight 170 pounds and certainly not enough surface area to distribute that way such a way has the capacity to break bones and is the reason why so many giants require leg braces and canes to combat the downward pull of gravity on their bodies if we continue to increase the height higher and higher we'll get to a point where the human body shape and proportions would simply be entirely unable to be capable of leaning upright and standing up even briefly as they quite literally would collapse right under their own weight the only way to combat such an issue is to grow thicker bones and stronger muscles to compensate but we run into a bit of a paradox here as the thicker bones and muscles would add more weight in the Sravan x' and stronger muscles and so on less necessary body plates and organs that contribute to the weight would need to be sacrificed to make room for bones and muscles but i will talk about that later you see because of this Giants wouldn't look exactly like a normal human shape proportion other physical traits would need to be sacrificed for maintaining such a size unlike most depictions of giants real 10 foot tall to 14 foot tall humanoids wouldn't look like regular humans with the same exact proportions just scaled up humans would have to change their figure significantly as evolution has shown us certain adaptations are necessary for maintaining large sizes which have developed in an animal kingdom several times independently first of all the legs would need to be much more pillar-like or column like humans are at a disadvantage against other animals because as bipeds we must be able to put all our body weight to be distributed on a single leg at a time simply because of the way we walk it would probably be the best if these Giants had elephantine our sauropod like legs there were very thick boned and muscled other parts of the body like the spinal column abdominal region etc would need to be reinforced and would probably be just like the legs thicker and wider in order to spread the weight more horizontally across a wider surface area instead of vertically on a smaller surface area for this reason giants would look very stocky and hefty the feet themselves would need to be like the legs much more pillar or elephantine in shape unlike our long and narrow feet the basis of these humanoids would need to be stubbier and more circular just like the extremity of many real-life shines through history like the sauropods as well as plenty of other dinosaurs elephants rhinos giraffes etc etc the heart would definitely need to increase in strength and size momentously to cope with the newfound gravitational demands the hearts of giraffes can weigh 25 pounds and be 2 feet long and must maintain double the amount of blood pressure in order to survive than a human's the hearts of elephants are 26 to 46 pounds and their blood vessels must be wide and thick to withstand the large amount of pressure put on them to wraps and other giant animals additionally have a complex pressure regulatory system in their bodies one of them being called the reteam or a belly which prevents excess blood flow to the brain when they lower their heads adaptations like this protect the animal from possibly fatal disturbances anyone who has been lying down and got up too fast knows this dizzy disorientating feeling however on a giraffe or a larger animal it could be very deadly additionally because there's so much pressure caused by the great amount of fluid weighing down on them the blood vessels and the legs of giraffes are covered in thick extremely tight layer of skin that prevents too much blood from pouring out of them when they're injured or cut perhaps the giant human would need a bunch of these adaptations to survive as well these structures as said before would add an excess amount of weight onto the pre-existing weight problem to solve this paradox the simple solution is to lose the weight that is not necessary I only saved the bare minimum brain size would probably the first stop some mental capabilities not necessary for survival would need to be weeded out of the population and consequently the large cranium size of Homo sapiens along with it the arms and upper body shrink would perhaps additionally strength proportionally to the rest of the body fingers wingspan etc might be stubbier to account for this conservation of weight in summary a larger heart thicker blood vessels a few specially evolved adaptations for maintaining blood pressure in equilibrium in the circulatory system thicker bones and stronger muscles would need to be necessary for giants giant humans would need to look much more broad squat and have thick column like legs abdominals and feet brain size would need to shrink alongside several other adaptations to shrink the overall weight down as much as possible this hypothetical race of 10 to 14 foot tall giants I will call homo Goliath offs would be a people that were built wider than normal humans in their proportion and would probably look like stretched out and distorted men and women they would be as simple not so sophisticated culture due to the reduction of brain size probably more in line with the intelligence of Homo erectus and other early humans as opposed to Homo sapiens and probably even Neanderthals probably at very best using sticks and stone tools whoever there would be an incredibly imposing species capable of delivering an unbelievably powerful kick and would be easily able to crush a man under their Mint's weight and strength if giant humans of this size ever evolved which they could have if the environmental conditions favoured early hominids to do so they might look something like this also it's important to understand that these proportions i theorize are for only a giant humanoid of 10 to 14 feet of height different heights would require different adaptations and specifications the rule of thumb is the taller giant the more and more traits and shapes would be sacrificed for supporting the weight unless quote-unquote human they would look a giant more in line with those of the Titans an attack on Titan would probably look more like this who knows two legs might not even be able to support that size at all and they might need to revert to quadrupedal stance and organisms with this size probably would need bones composed of an entirely different substance than collagen and calcium at the end of the day it's just important to not make the same mistake of our ancestors by believing giant humanoids would simply be scaled up versions of humans with the same proportions and everything giant humans wouldn't look like this but something like this giant animals have specific adaptations for their lifestyles and it's more complicated than they're scaling it up now looking back to Game of Thrones I gotta say their Giants are well surprisingly scientifically accurate 1:1 and his people's are freaking great accuracy wise with that much more squatter appearance thick column like limbs in elephantine like feet they even seem to have given the Giants in the world of Ice and Fire reduced intelligence in brain size which makes sense for an animal that probably wouldn't need smarts to survive when it could rely on its size entirely I can hardly say the same for other media the Titans from attack on Titan for instance are absolutely terrible by mechanically and am atomically speaking all the Titans would be crushed under the pressure this isn't something limited to attack on Titans most Giants immediate fail biologically speaking entirely it would be awesome if more movies and shows took a more scientific approach and some deeper thought into their giant designs I'd love to see as much if not more attention to detail put into giant humanoids like those in Game of Thrones in the future so Hollywood give me some more biologically sound joints it could be vastly more interesting and creative while I'm on the subject I might as well briefly discussed quadrupedal and nonhumanoid Giants as well like King Kong again the situation is similar to giant humanoids scaling a smaller organism up to be massive with the same exact proportions and everything isn't scientifically accurate it simply wouldn't work certain adaptations and evolutionary sacrifices are necessary to maintain such a large height in size some of them the same with giant humanoids such as larger and stronger heart a bunch of the other organs that are maintained the circulatory system and blood pressure and column like legs and feet now convergent evolution has shown us many times throughout history that organisms of truly massive height somewhere maybe along the lines of King Kong and consistently have evolved the same body shape and design independently sauropods intricate ears and other animals evolved a similar shape and Anatomy it seems likely that an actual giant ape around the size of King Kong wouldn't look like this but like this so yeah learn some science pop culture and just look at the biomechanics and evolution to see what real Giants chine humanoids or whatnot would look like it would definitely yield some very super interesting results in concepts that I would love to see and with that this was straight explainer and thanks for watching before I go I'd just like to say this video idea was partly inspired if not mostly inspired by the planet for on a blog post about the subject and it greatly interested me the author of the blog writes some extremely interesting articles and discussions about biology biomechanics and evolution so I would definitely suggest you go check out his original post as well as others again sorry for the massive wait please accept my apology in the form of this colorized photo of a quagga made by me all right see you guys next time

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,361,585

Rating: 4.6072912 out of 5

Keywords: giants, giant, biology, science, game of thrones, evolution, giant humans, titans, gigantism, humbaba, gilgamesh, goliath

Id: dbOSHoa7h3E

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/PUNSLING3R]

Trey is great, should definitely check out all his videos.

[u/The-Grand-Boi]

ah i love Trey and i completely forgot about this video