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The largest real-life animals are all found in the ocean, both extant and prehistoric species, since the buoyancy of water protects them from gravity. So, a huge animal such as an elephant or whale has far more volume relative to its surface area and length than a mouse or rabbit would, and scaling up a mouse to elephant size would crush it (and it would overheat, too). This is where the square-cube law comes in, stating that if an object's linear size increases, such as length or height alone, then the surface area increases by the square of that length boost, and the volume increases by the cube. The result would be an elephant collapsing if its skeleton was proportionally the same as the mouse's own. If a mouse and an elephant were somehow the same size, then the elephant would have thicker and sturdier bones by design, and the mouse can get away with having more slender bones. This is because a mouse is small enough that its gravity is mild, while the elephant, relative to its size, would feel the pull of gravity more strongly. As animals scale up, the design of their bodies changes to accommodate their weight, such as their skeletons. Not only are massive creatures very hungry for calories, but they are proportionally heavier than smaller animals. Ultimately, thresher maws are a work of science fiction, and the fun shouldn't be ruined by real-life laws of physics and nature, but it is still worth considering.
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Worst of all, a typical thresher maw (especially Kalros) would destroy itself with its sheer bulk, thanks to the square-cube law. Something that huge, and that heavy, probably wouldn't be able to move much at all, let alone fast enough to chase the Mako around. Thresher maws are described as being unusually fast for their size in Mass Effect lore, but that's so that they can catch up to Shepard and provide a fight. Those that are truly massive tend to be herbivores since they can't outrun anything (such as the giant Thorian, which doesn't even move). As animals get bigger, they tend to get slower. Larger animals need a lot of calories to stay alive, and while thresher maws dodge that issue by eating ores in the ground, that doesn't explain them all away. Some animals are certainly much larger, but being bigger comes at a serious cost. The main problem is their size, which is wildly impractical. By no means could a creature like a thresher maw exist in the real universe, even on far-off alien worlds like those depicted in Mass Effect. Finally, there's the matter of Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws, which can be summoned to take down the Reaper destroyer that took up position near the Shroud.īut in a franchise like Mass Effect, which prides itself on realism so much it uses details like Newtons and force to explain Biotics, Thresher Maws are an odd science-fiction conceit. And, of course, there is that thresher maw battle during Grunt's loyalty mission, and killing it means the Urdnot warriors can savor thresher maw steaks while Grunt earns bonus glory for taking down such a foe. These huge, terrifying beasts can appear out of nowhere on remote worlds, challenging Commander Shepard to take them down aboard the Mako while avoiding their acid attacks. The Mass Effect games needed mini-boss battles aside from the likes of the cyborg Saren Arterius and Matriarch Benezia, and to that end, the design of thresher maws is ideal.