![]() In the real world, different populations of gorillas have widely varied diets but tend to gravitate toward leaves, fruits and other parts of hundreds of plant species. To put that in human terms, that's about 6,000 heads of lettuce, 15,000 Big Macs or 65,000 Pop-Tarts. Since an average adult male gorilla eats approximately 50 pounds of food daily-about one-eighth of its body weight-we can guess that Kong would need at least 7,500 pounds of food per day. Larger animals tend to have lower metabolic rates, but it's reasonable to expect that Kong would consume truckloads of food every day. Since Kong is a mammal, his dietary requirements would be quite demanding. Of course, keeping a big body like that powered would require huge amounts of food. If equipped with these anatomical specializations, Kong would have a big heart and high blood pressure (probably about 2.5 times that of a human), but he'd be relatively healthy. They have elastic blood vessels and special valves in their neck arteries, which help pump blood the long distance from their heart to their head. Giraffes are almost as tall and are more than able to keep their bodies running. The good news is that as long as he didn't move around much, Kong could probably survive just fine. If he tried to run, jump or tackle something, there's a good chance he'd simply crumple. Kong's massive bones might be strong enough to support his weight, but he likely wouldn't have enough muscle mass to move around. His dimensions, especially the robustness of his legs, should be much more extreme than a big male gorilla's." Kong's appearance is basically that of a gorilla writ large this is not what we'd expect from a giant gorilla. "In a worst case scenario, which is still quite likely, he couldn't even stand. He might even have a hard time moving faster than a slow shuffle," says Hutchinson. "Given that Kong would be supporting his mass on two legs, I strongly doubt he'd be athletic at all. That would make it quite difficult for him to get around. At that size, a very rough estimate tells us Kong would weigh anywhere from 20 to 60 tons. In the movie, Kong appears to be about 25 feet tall in a crouch-about seven times the height of an actual silverback gorilla. This is basically correct, I think," says John Hutchinson, a researcher at the University of London's Royal Veterinary College, who studies how very large animals stand and move. "I remember my high school physics teacher telling me that Kong was a physical impossibility. ![]() But what if he wasn't? Could a giant gorilla like Kong really exist? ![]() Of course, we all know that no matter how realistic he looks on the screen, Kong is just a fantasy. ![]()
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