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December 17, 2005

King Kong's Island Illusion

Today, I fell in love with a great ape. A twenty-five foot tall silverback gorilla, to be precise. I'll admit, I went to see the T-Rex fight scene, which went so far beyond what I expected, it was really quite amazing. But I stayed to see the love story of the beauty and the beast.

Much like Jurassic Park and its sequels, we travel once again to an uncharted jungle island packed with big beasties like long-extinct dinosaurs, giant apes, and lamp post-sized bats, all wanting to snack on any intrepid explorers that accidently or purposefully find their way there. But what's interesting from a natural history perspective is that the concept of apex predators on an island is considered unrealistic from a naturalist's point of view.

The massive star of the new movie King Kong, which opens today, effectively apes real gorillas. But the bizarre assortment of wildlife on the creature's island home seems to be from out of this world.

...

In the island's jungles roam a wide array of dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus rex; aggressive, 3-foot (90-centimeter) cockroaches; bloodthirsty car-size crabs; and, of course, Kong, a 25-foot-tall (8-meter-tall) silverback gorilla who lives alone in his mountain hideaway.

It's a world that violates most of modern science's evolutionary rules.

...

"Islands, even moderately large ones, are notoriously devoid of large predators," he said. "The two largest predators on Cuba are a lizard and the red-tailed hawk. The whole notion of apex predators on islands is fantasy."

More At: King Kong Island Home Is Pure Fantasy, Ecology Experts Say

Well, I'll believe that it is very unlikely that large predators like Kong would be living on an island, but still, I don't like the idea of eliminating the concept entirely.

That said, I would feel a lot less skeptical if there had been a clear food chain (smaller creatures as well as larger) on Skull Island. But still, if there was a place with apex predators, then it certainly would be somewhere uninhabited and primitive and isolated, which makes an island an ideal setting for such fantastical fiction.

Posted by sorsha at December 17, 2005 11:02 PM