Henry Gee takes a look at why there are so few big animal species <\/p>
There are several answers to why there are just a few huge animals, says Helen Gee. <\/strong><\/p> The first is simply that the earliest organisms in any group tend to be small, and remain small – only a few evolve larger sizes. <\/p> The second is that large organisms take a lot of energy to maintain. So they require larger spaces to live in, and competition with other large animals will ensure that there are fewer of them. <\/p> The third is that larger creatures often run into problems of heat loss and support not suffered by smaller animals. <\/p> Yet a fourth is that larger animals tend to have fewer offspring, keeping populations small and survival precarious. <\/p> The fifth is that once they have become big, they need a huge standing stock of smaller creatures to feed on. It’s no wonder that the biggest creatures evolve in the sea – where the territories are vast, and problems of support and heat loss are minimised – and graze on enormous quantities of plankton that are further down the food-chain and easy to harvest.<\/p> Henry Gee takes a look at why there are so few big animal species <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":38990,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare.jpg",2121,1413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-1024x682.jpg",800,533,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-1536x1023.jpg",1536,1023,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/why-are-huge-animals-so-rare-2048x1364.jpg",2048,1364,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Henry Gee takes a look at why there are so few big animal species","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/38989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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