A Mouse Walks Away From a Fall That Explodes an Elephant Because Weight Outgrows Skin
Make an animal 10 times longer and its skin grows 100 times, but its weight grows 1,000 times, and that decides who survives the landing.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · What Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1Imagine dropping animals of three very different sizes off a skyscraper onto a stack of mattresses and you get three very different landings. The mouse is stunned for a moment, then recovers and wanders off irritated. The dog breaks all its bones and dies. The elephant is destroyed on impact, reduced to a puddle of gore.
The difference is not toughness. It is what happens to bodies when they get bigger.
Picture a marble sized animal shaped like a ball. It has a length, a skin covering its surface, and a volume, which is all the stuff inside like organs and muscles. Make that animal 10 times longer, about the size of a basketball. Its skin does not grow 10 times. It grows 100 times. Its volume grows 1,000 times. Volume is what determines weight.
That lopsided math decides the fall. The more weight an animal carries, the more energy it has when it hits the ground, and the harder the shock. The more skin and surface it has compared with that weight, the more the impact is spread out, and the more the air slows it down on the way.
An elephant is so large that its outer area is tiny compared with its bulk. A huge amount of energy arrives over a small braking area, and the air barely slows it at all. The result is total destruction.
Mice and still more insects sit toward the small end of animal sizes, with a lot of surface area for their weight. For them, air drag does much of the work and the landing is spread thin. You could drop an ant from a jet high above the ground and it would escape without serious injury. At that size, falling from a great height is nearly irrelevant.
Questions people ask
Can a mouse still be hurt by falling?
A mouse can be hurt by a fall, but gravity alone rarely does it serious harm. Its tiny weight and large relative surface keep impact energy low and air braking high. A predator, a trap, or a violent short impact is a bigger danger than height itself.
Does air really slow a falling animal?
Yes, roughly in proportion to the area facing the air. Air pushes on every falling body, and that push matters more when the facing area is large compared with weight. For an elephant, the push is tiny compared with its enormous weight, so it keeps accelerating almost as if the air were not there. For an ant, the push is large compared with its weight, so it drifts down slowly.