Narrator: That roar belongs to one of the most iconic
movie monsters of all time:
Godzilla.
Since his debut in 1954,
the King of Monsters has rampaged across Tokyo,
New York City, and Osaka
to name a few.
And over the years, he's gotten bigger,
and bigger,
and bigger.
The latest Godzilla is a record
119 meters tall,
about six times taller than the tallest animal in history.
And to be fair,
it's a fantasy film, not a nature documentary.
But just how fantastical is a 36-story-tall
lizard-dinosaur creature who breathes
beams of atomic energy?
Well, energy beams aside,
Godzilla is actually even more unrealistic
than you might think.
Now, Earth is no stranger to enormous animals.
Just look at the largest dinosaur,
the titanosaurs,
or today's blue whales,
which reach up to 30 meters long
and can weigh 200 tons.
Compared to them,
Godzilla doesn't seem that impossible, right?
- These critters are massive on a scale that's
just totally impossible.
I mean,
assuming, at least, they're made of anything even remotely
like what we're made out of
and follow any of the roles of biology,
they are completely impossible.
Narrator: That's paleontologist Mike Habib.
He's an expert in giant reptiles
and also helps design fantastical creatures
for TV and film.
And according to him,
a creature like Godzilla could never exist in real life
for multiple reasons.
First, he would be brain-dead long before he ever
reached a city
because his heart simply isn't large and powerful enough
to pump blood to his head.
- His heart would have to be thousands of tons
and fill most of his chest.
You'd have to have vessels that you could
drive a car through,
and he would need the energy consumption of a small
power plant, probably, every minute in order to run it.
Of course, he's nuclear-powered,
so maybe he has the energy to spare.
Narrator: In reality,
large animals like titanosaurs
got around this by walking on all fours with their heads
held out in front them,
not held up high.
That way, they don't have to pump blood
against gravity as far.
But even if Godzilla did crawl across cities on all fours,
he'd have another problem:
movement.
You see, whenever you lift your leg or arm,
it's because your brain fires signals to the nerves in your
leg and arm muscles.
The fastest of these signals travel around
100 meters per second,
so the message from brain to leg is virtually instantaneous.
Not for Godzilla though.
It would take more than a full second for nerve signals to
travel the length of his body.
Now, a second still sounds pretty quick,
but in reality...
Mike Habib: His nerve-conduction speed
becomes so slow that he can't move.
Takes forever to do anything.
Narrator: Now, Godzilla does look pretty
sluggish in the films,
but it turns out, in reality, it would look more like this.
But even if Godzilla could move super fast,
he wouldn't have time to fight enemies
or demolish buildings
because he'd be too busy sunbathing.
All animals need a way to regulate body temperature.
Reptiles and other cold-blooded animals stay warm
by basking in the sun.
But in Godzilla's case,
heat from the sun would have to travel through meters upon
meters of tissue to penetrate his hide
and reach his internal organs.
So to stay warm, he'd have to spend hundreds of hours
straight sunbathing.
But what if Godzilla were more like a mammal?
Like us?
He wouldn't need to rely on the sun
since we warm-blooded creatures produce our own body heat.
But unfortunately,
that would cause yet another problem.
- But then he's so big,
he probably cooks himself.
His core temperature hits 300 degrees.
Narrator: Yikes.
And even if he somehow got around all these problems,
his skeleton would still collapse under its own weight.
Now, Mike says he's a whopping 90,000 metric tons,
and that skeleton's just not strong enough to support
90,000 metric tons of, well, anything.
- Yeah, he would just crumple.
Yeah.
He'd just collapse.
He'd be a very large pile of meat.
Narrator: Not a very intimidating picture.
In the end,
Mike says Godzilla could only be about half as tall as he
was in the original film
before his poor heart would give out.
But just because Godzilla's body is unrealistic
doesn't mean it's bad.
In fact, he's perfect for the role.
He's tall enough to stalk past city skyscrapers,
which give us iconic scenes like this.
Mike: Just straight-up magic in the modern world setting
and just go and enjoy it as such.