Right. They were very large and insect gigantism needs a great amount of oxygen. However, king kong movie sized bugs probably never existed. Just large insects relative to their current size.

Also, from what I understand, exoskeletons can not support the same amount of weight an endoskeleton can. They have a limit.

[edit on 12/4/2008 by prototism]

What are you thinking? Is this part of a conspiracy, because I would love to hear it. And one more question you might ask is, were these ancient creatures more intelligent than modern creatures of the same kind?

In the late Carboniferous very large insects were real. One of the most popular seems to be a dragonfly with a 70cm wingspan.

Oxygen is a favorite culprit but I've read that there is some debate about that- apparently they think these insects might have been able to "inhale" as it were, which would make them viable in lower oxygen atmospheres than if they just had to absorb oxygen passively.

I always thought insect were limited in size do to having no lungs and intaking air through spiracles at the side of their bodies. Maybe if Oxygen was more concentrated they could grow to a larger size, i remember reading about gerbils the size of elephants, personally a spider the size of a coin gives me the heebeegeebees if i seen a spider the size of a dog id need more oxygen.

Big tarantulas have book lungs- a rudimentary type of localized oxygen transfer across a series of membranes i believe, these are the bird eating types i think...
so oxygen limits size more than the exoskeleton it seems..

Go to the middle of the arizona dessert. Check out the size of the bugs there. Cockroaches that sound like helicopters. And 5x the normal size.

Yes, giant bugs have existed.

Wouldn't it make sense that the more oxygen available to the brain the more growth it will induce. Since when your brain is deprived of oxygen the cells die would it not also make sense in the reverse? If this is true than maybe these bugs were not only bigger, but also smarter than today's bugs which some of them are pretty smart for bugs.

I think a lot of scientists are starting to realize that the oxygen rich environment syndrome may have been a contributer, but the REAL culprit for the giantism was the fact that the light coming from the sun was more red-shifted than it is now.

There's a lot of experimentation being done now to prove it, and so far the results are working out precisely as they predicted. Red shifted light seems to be a big factor in the extra large growth capacity for the creatures in the early eras on earth.


interesting stuff, either way. it explains why the dinos, plants, insects, etc, all were of quite large size, AND would also go far to explain why we see now animals and plants which were once the large scale, but are now VERY small compared to their fossil versions.

That giant dragonfly would be one example. Its ancestor would have been large due to the red shifted light, and is now much smaller now that we're into more yellow than red.

Do a google on Red Shifted Giantism and you'll see some interesting stuff relating to it



Edit to add : I was thnking if it is true, that could have some pretty cool implications for future food growth.. imagine using red shifted light to aid in getting larger sized veggies and fruits to help feed more people.. or breed cows of larger size, etc, to get more meat from them than normal. Neat to think

[edit on 6-12-2008 by Jomina]

do you know the names of all of these insects that were in the movie?i'm not just talking just about the spider pit scene i'm talking about every other scene.icluding the lake monster scene i mean it's the least you can do