Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam Here. If you're considering a summer vacation
Speaker 1: to a fictitious land, then Skull Island is an eco
Speaker 1: tourism dream come true. There you can avoid the genetic
Speaker 1: mischief of Jurassic Park's Island, Newbar and the radioactive horror
Speaker 1: of Monster Island, but still visit a place where prehistoric
Speaker 1: creatures thrive in the wild. Skull Island, sometimes called Kong's Island,
Speaker 1: is home to a perplexing array of organisms, as captured
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirty three film King Kong and its
Speaker 1: sequels and remakes. It houses everything from native populations of
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens to dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus, and then
Speaker 1: there's the ape lord himself, King Kong. Unlike the dinosaurs, pterosaurs,
Speaker 1: and plesiosaurs upon the island, Kong doesn't quite line up
Speaker 1: with any known prehistoric beast. Even Gigantipithecus, the largest known
Speaker 1: primate of all time, stood no more than ten ft
Speaker 1: tall that's about three meters. Kong, however, stands at least
Speaker 1: eighteen feet or five and a half meters tall In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty three film, and it's even taller in
Speaker 1: some tellings. Sizing up like this can prove something of
Speaker 1: a risky move. Evolutionarily speaking, bigger bodies come with increased
Speaker 1: energy demands and body changes to keep everything from falling apart.
Speaker 1: Noted zoologist R McNeil Alexander once explained that King Kong
Speaker 1: would collapse under his own weight could be a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five times the volume of a real ape
Speaker 1: loaded with a hundred and twenty five times the weight,
Speaker 1: but on the physical frame of a typical gorilla, his
Speaker 1: legs simply wouldn't be able to support him. Essentially, you
Speaker 1: can't just scale up a creature's size and expect it
Speaker 1: to function the same way. Plus, an ape like cong
Speaker 1: might be big enough to defeat all its fellow beasts
Speaker 1: in a brawl, but couldn't cope with climate change, habitat loss,
Speaker 1: or the destructive tendencies of human civilization. And if he
Speaker 1: soundhow could support his own weight. Being big isn't enough
Speaker 1: to cope with these other dangers. Prehistoric titans like Gigantipithecus
Speaker 1: and the giant sloths present a valuable lesson in the
Speaker 1: vulnerability of life as giant land mammals. National Geographic once
Speaker 1: pointed out that, based on computer modeling of heights, every
Speaker 1: species has an effective upper limit of size, and the
Speaker 1: closer they evolved towards that size, the greater the risk
Speaker 1: of extinction. Perhaps that's why King Kong is typically described
Speaker 1: as the last of his kind. Even Skull Island seems
Speaker 1: incapable of supporting a robust population of rampaging giant apes.
Speaker 1: Not only would he be considered an endangered species, he's
Speaker 1: also what's often referred to as functionally extinct, because, let's
Speaker 1: face it, Kong's species is at a dead end. Despite
Speaker 1: an alleged son of Kong popping up from time to time,
Speaker 1: the population of his species has clearly dipped well below
Speaker 1: the threshold for genetically stable reproduction. In other words, if
Speaker 1: there are female Hongs out there, the resulting offspring would
Speaker 1: be subject to the sort of lack of genetic diversity
Speaker 1: that leads to genetic disorders and eventually extinction. And Kong's
Speaker 1: not alone. Several real life species exist in this state
Speaker 1: of impending doom, including the bay a g a freshwater
Speaker 1: dolphin once found in the Yanksee River. We've even seen
Speaker 1: A recent example of a last known member of a
Speaker 1: species succumbing to extinction George, the last Hawaiian tree snail,
Speaker 1: who died in captivity on January one. George was no giant,
Speaker 1: but his death highlights one of the lesser known plights
Speaker 1: of extinction, that of snails and slugs. Amphibians face a
Speaker 1: similar crisis, and in both cases there are inevitable ripple
Speaker 1: effects throughout the ecosystem. While King Kong seems to exist
Speaker 1: in order to battle other giant creatures, these smaller victims
Speaker 1: of extinction play subtler but still vital ecological roles, such
Speaker 1: as decomposing waste or keeping mosquito populations in check. When
Speaker 1: we lose them, we risk greater threats. So certainly poor
Speaker 1: one out for lonely King Kong. But on the bright side,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like he'll vanish from the world of
Speaker 1: cinema anytime soon. Instead, it consider the many critically endangered
Speaker 1: species of the real world and what you can do
Speaker 1: to help them. Today's episode was written by Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios. Hastuff works for more in this and lots
Speaker 1: of other gigantic topics, visit our home planet, how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And for more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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