In proportion to body length, why do elephants have thicker legs than ants?

It's a funny question, I've never thought about it before, haha. Elephants' legs are thicker than ants, and I think this is directly related to their respective weights. For example, in the case of elephants, the elephant is very tall and long, and with it, its weight will be very, very heavy, if the elephant has legs as thin as ants, then the legs will be broken when walking, haha, this is my own opinion.

There is also the fact that the ant is small for a long time, and the small one can't see it if you don't look carefully, even if the ant is fat, its legs will not be particularly thick, because its weight and height determine that its legs will not be particularly thick and long. And if you look at an elephant, lions and tigers are afraid of it, and they are more than a cut above people. Its legs must be thick enough to support its body.

In addition, elephants and ants are basically animals from different worlds, to be precise, they should be different species, so the structure and proportion of growth are also different. A tall and burly figure needs firmer and heavier legs to support, while an ant's thin body does not need thick leg support, and if it is thick legs, it will be difficult to move.

The main reason why elephant legs are thicker than ant legs is because elephants and ants do not belong to the same species at all. Because ants belong to the beetle family, the bones of beetles grow on the outside, just like grasshoppers, their exoskeleton is wrapped in meat. So relatively speaking, the body proportions of these insects are actually relatively perfect.

And ants can also lift things that are many times heavier than themselves, so this is why the insects in the world can survive for tens of millions of years, because relatively speaking, their exoskeleton is easier to adapt to the environmental changes of the outside society, and they can survive in some relatively cold or hot environments.

The reason why elephants' legs are so thick is mainly because elephants, like humans, have bones that grow in their flesh. So in this case, in order to support its large body, the elephant's legs must be stronger. Because the bones inside are relatively thick, in order to control these bones on the outside, a lot of muscles have grown.

This is the natural evolutionary choice of organisms, because of the different natural environments, so these animals have different ways of evolution.

Elephants have thicker legs than ants, yes, that's probably nonsense. So, if we scale down the elephant in equal proportions (or ants in equal proportions) until they are about the same size, why are elephant legs still thicker than ants?

Elephants are the largest known animals on land. At present, there are only three kinds of elephants left on the earth: Asian elephants, African savannah elephants (referred to as African elephants), and African forest elephants. Among them, the African elephant is the largest, with a height of up to one meter at the shoulder and a ton in weight.

In addition to its large size, the most striking features of the elephant are its long, thick trunk, large fan-like ears, and cylindrical legs. Elephants' legs are not flexible, and their knees cannot flex and extend freely. But the trunk of an elephant is the opposite:

The trunk can be similar in length to an elephant, covered with muscle tissue, and can pick up hundreds of kilograms of objects or pinch a small peanut.

In addition to these characteristics, elephants also have a pair of well-developed upper incisors (tusks), which can be up to a metre long Valuable natural material used to make a variety of utensils and crafts After the advent of plastic, ivory was replaced in many material fields. However, due to the rarity and preciousness of ivory, the market effect still endangers elephants, so in order to protect elephants, most countries have now banned the ivory trade.

So, let's go back to the original question: Why do elephants have thicker legs than ants?

The reason is not complicated: the strength of bones and muscles depends on their cross-sectional area. This means that if the weight of the animal is doubled in the same proportions, the weight capacity of the legs will be increased by four times.

Unfortunately, if the density of the animal's body tissue is the same, the weight depends on the volume, so the weight of the animal will increase by a factor of eight. Therefore, the larger the animal, the more it is necessary to make the ratio of leg diameter to body length larger. Conversely, the smaller the animal, the smaller the ratio of leg diameter to body length.

Therefore, although the legs of ants are very thin, they are still very strong relative to their own body weight, and can carry objects equivalent to dozens of times their own weight.

Correspondingly, it can be predicted: under the condition that the proportions of all parts of an ant's body remain unchanged, it will be directly enlarged to a scale similar to that of an elephant, so that the ant will not be able to carry heavy objects and even stand up.