People are way way bigger than this gecko and still some don't have a brain or a heart
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
607 points (100.0% liked)
Science Memes
17005 readers
2484 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Now consider a fruit fly. I know it might not be as complex but it is still alive and has a heart and some kind of brain.
i thought they don't have lungs or a circulatory system or anything. "breathe" through their exoskeleton. brain maybe, but some systems missing. i accept i could be wrong.
You are probably right. But some systems of animated life must there. And at that size it is quite impressive.
One of???
Plz show smaller. Will wait
IMO, this kind of amazement mostly points to humans not really unserstanding how tiny the building blocks of reality are. Even the "massive" protein molecules your body uses with hundreds of thousands of atoms in them, tens of thousands of amino acid chains, can fit many on the tip of a sewing needle.
Titin has over 30,000 amino acids in it, and barely gets over 1um in length. That's barely wider than a sharp razor blade's edge, and they're orders of magnitude sharper than most knives.
The scale of the world is crazy, and we are already giants in it.
The scale of the world is crazy, and we are already giants in it.
"What would it feel like to rule over a vast empire composed of literally billions of cells?"
Yeah, ask yourself.
Try literally trillions. Billions is literally several orders of magnitude less than reality.
Again, most people literally cannot fathom the scales. Not as an insult, but to point out the literal scale. (god I'm such a millenial with all those 'literals', but it's true...)
Regarding Titin’s full name
This word has 189,819 characters in its name and takes almost two hours to pronounce.
I find this extremely amusing.
I wanted to listen to it, so I went looking.
And I am wildly disappointed that the only human-read video I could find is a freakin’ ASMR video. I can’t watch that shit.
The computer-read versions make it sound like it would make a great tongue twister memory sort of thing. I’m honestly a tiny bit surprised it hasn’t been done.
That's, like... half a novel long.
Perfect protein to write a paper about
Hm, I disagree. Most complex animals we know are kinda big. When you get to the size of this lizard, usually we talking about insects that are little more than muscle automata. When we think of lizards, we think of of animals with a level of complex personality we can identify with.
When something complex is this minified, it is amazing. If you don't think so, maybe you lost some sense of awe in life.
Again, it is amazing ... but because we cannot fathom how big it still is.
I'd give you a Vulkan, "neat, curious even, but not mind blowing", as to what I mean a truly aware response would be.
It's neat, but if you're aware of the developmental stages of even just human babies, it's really not surprising nor unique as to how small something with such differentiated parts is.
usually we talking about insects that are little more than muscle automata
i think you vastly underestimate the complexity and engineering in insects and microorganisms
Yeah, but its not made out of undifferentiated proteins, its made out of cells.
A human red blood cell is about 6.2 μ wide (though only a couple micrometers thick), so if we assume this little guy is 1.5 cm long that's only 2420 human red blood cells from tip to tail.
IMO that's pretty amazing and you should be amazed.
Nah. You are assuming a red blood cell is a common size. It'd be like aliens coming to Earth, seeing Humans, and assuming life's average scale is that of a human on this planet.
There is a MASSIVE scale of difference between cells of different animals. Some cells can be seen with the naked eye. That doesn't magically mean other animal cells have to also be large.
There are entire living organisms that are smaller than Titin. Several species of eukaryotes are smaller than Titin, and they're single celled orgsnisms by definition. A single celled organism smaller than a human blood cell by an order of magnitude.
That says nothing of prokaryotes, which are also celled organisms that are multiple orders of magnitude smaller still.
Again, it's amazing only because you assume humans aren't fucking insanely huge. An understandable perspective for sure, but a wrong perspective none the less.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC cell size is mostly determined by the necessary rate of diffusion across the membrane and the surface area to volume ratio for a given size.
So, while there are some extreme outliers with more exotic cell biology, organisms having similar cellular metabolisms will generally have similarly sized cells, at least within an order of magnitude. Or in other words, an elephant is much larger than an ant because it has many more cells, not because its cells are much larger.
An exception to this of course being neural cells, which can be very very long, or very wide and branched (like Purkinje cells). But even within the brain this still kinda holds true. I actually know much more about brain anatomy than general biology, and I remember from the book Principles of Brain Evolution that elephant brains are much larger than ours, and actually have a much larger number of neurons, and that strangely intelligence seems to correlate more with the ratio between brain and body size than with absolute brain size. A possible explanation is that it may simply take a larger number of neurons to coordinate a larger number of muscle cells.
EDIT: case in point C. Elegans is about 1mm (or 1000 μm) long and has 1031 cells, including 302 neurons, which lines up with its cells being about as large as human cells when you consider that its a 3D volume and not a single chain of cells lined up next to each other.
Definitely wrong, although I do not have a collegiate off-hand understanding of biology to really fully decribe it.
But it comes down to what does a "cell" mean in biology? Even your case in point specifies an object with many cells in it.
Cell membranes don't use simple diffusion to transport chemicals across. That's the entire point of a "cell". It's a defined region that at least attempts to control its own various chemical balances. Cells do have many gates that allow many molecules across, unfortunately including many viruses and prions. Unfortuntely, cell walls are also not impervious to truly toxic chemicals, either, so a "cell wall" still can absolutely break down with minimal effort with the right chemicals. They do attempt to control their own balances though, including basic ionic content. That's the whole point. The attempt.
I really have to ask... Why do you think humans aren't so big on the scale of life? Your perspective really come across as human-centric. Not "bad" by itself, but still wholly incompatible with reality.
The thing that does change in relation to diffusion at scale is the necessity of circulatory and respertory systems, which is a massive order of magnitude or few increase in complexity than cells.
Definitely wrong, although I do not have a collegiate off-hand understanding of biology to really fully decribe it.
Well, from reading this its pretty clear to me now that you don't know much about biology. And yet you have really strong opinions on something you have no education in.
But it comes down to what does a “cell” mean in biology? Even your case in point specifies an object with many cells in it.
What are you even trying to say here?
Cell membranes don’t use simple diffusion to transport chemicals across.
They do for quite a lot things actually. Simple diffusion, facilitated diffusion, and active transport all take place and are all necessary for the cell to function. The ratio of cytoplasm volume to cell membrane area is relevant regardless.
By the way, you didn't need to write an entire paragraph about homeostasis or try to define what a cell is.
I really have to ask… Why do you think humans aren’t so big on the scale of life? Your perspective really come across as human-centric. Not “bad” by itself, but still wholly incompatible with reality.
Your perspective really comes across like you're high on something. You also apparently didn't understand what my comment was even about. It was about this sentence:
You are assuming a red blood cell is a common size
I wasn't assuming anything. In saying "correct me if I'm wrong" I was being charitable in leaving the door open that you might know something relevant about cellular scale that I didn't. But I'm pretty confident now that is not the case.
Who's to say that this photo was taken on the thumb of a really large giant human?
We need a banana for scale
it's got room in its bones for marrow.
Rotifers are multicellular animals and have organs, and they are a lot smaller than this. Maybe not as cute though.
That's not small, that smol
^smol^
More
Is this one of the lizards you can keep as pets? Can I have a giant wall sized glass tank just absolutely full of these little derps living their lives and eating stuff and generally being happy?
Probably not easily but you can get mourning geckos, which are a bit bigger but still very small. They reproduce asexually as well, kind of common in the trade.
How many do you need for a burger?
How big of a burger you want?
1 standard burger unit.
American or European standard?
Must one know these things when at Burger King?