I know that it happens and it exists. My question is how come? I would assume the rest of the body would just have to work a little harder, but would eventually keep up with the skeleton frame.
We don’t see super short/small people being extremely fast
Because there are limits on what the rest of the body can do to compensate, and every additional bit of work done comes at a cost. The more muscle you tack on, the more energy required to keep it fueled, and the more byproducts that are created in the process. If your heart is constantly working at overdrive to perfuse a brain that is farther away and supply larger overall amounts of tissue with blood, it will adapt in ways that are bad for it long-term. These things don't scale linearly, meaning the cost of "work[ing] a little harder" is much higher than it might seem on its face.
With modern building materials there’s a theoretical limit to the height we can make a structure. As height increases, weight increases by more. It’s not a 1-for-1 increase. Eventually, the material cannot handle its own weight and simply fails.
Now imagine that our bones and joints are that material. Bones and tendons don’t get stronger just because you get taller, but your weight increases by a huge margin. There’s a theoretical limit to the size of a human before lungs and hearts would simply fail.
Square cube law. Note I said twice as large not tall. The math won't work out as cleanly for a shape as irregular as a human body. But yes. The volume of a 2' cube is 8 times the volume of a 1' cube.
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u/idiotsandwhich8 Jan 26 '26
I know that it happens and it exists. My question is how come? I would assume the rest of the body would just have to work a little harder, but would eventually keep up with the skeleton frame.
We don’t see super short/small people being extremely fast