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Re: Armalligator was: Email

From: KH.Ranitzsch@t... (K.H.Ranitzsch)
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 08:02:33 +0100
Subject: Re: Armalligator was: Email


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Bilderback" <bbilderback@hotmail.com>
> >Here, I am not so much concerned with tool use as with locomotion.
> >Unless the athmosphere/fluid where it habitually lives is dense
enough
> >to provide significant buoyancy, moving with splayed legs implies
> >significant energy costs.
>
> If you'll recall my original posting on this issue, these aliens are
native
> to a world with an incredibly dense atmosphere, somewhere on the order
of
> 2-4 atmospheres.  Is that dense enough to help?

No. Gas density rises in proportion to the the pressure. At 2-4
Athmospheres
the air would weigh 2-4 times as much as on Earth - still negligible for
hoölding up a solid body, especially if incorporates lots of metal.

Note that you may get away with ana limb arrangement that is able to
provide
static support without using muscles to lift the body. Arches would be a
possibility, too.

> The energy's called metabolism.  Metal for these creatures is food,
NOT
> building material.

There seems to be some confusion here. Food is whatever an animal eats.
For
terrestrial animals, it has two functions: providing building material
which
the animal incorporates into its body (e.g.Calcium for bones) and
supplying
energy to allow the animal to function and move (carbohydrates and fats,
mostly).
You could imagine organisms where tese two functions of food are
separate -
insect-eating plants are an example. They get most of their energy needs
from sunlights, but the insects provide important trace elements for
their
organism.

Greetings


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