Determining factor(s) for making creatures robust to square cubed law

Premise and research

I am simply trying to find a reproducible framework for use with creature-design. In my research I have found the larger an animal is, the more likely that animal is to break its bones, generally speaking. Larger animals would need thicker bones to handle the higher stress loads. Furthermore, I learned that heat becomes an issue the larger a creature scales. So heat dissipation traits would be favorable to hedge against the square-cubed law; things like less hair, larger extremities, ect.

Question

Assuming that bone structure/density and heat dissipation traits make the list, what other determining factors are most scientifically relevant to making a creature robust to scaling up without violating the square cubed law?

Note: I'm not asking for an exhaustive list, as that would be too broad. Instead, I'm looking for a small handful of determining factors that would be helpful for a creature designer to scale up his/her creatures while being mindful of the square cubed law.

Further clarifications:

• Desired Scale: undetermined, ideally as big as possible while still allowing the creature to move reasonably well.
• Body Type: I'm mostly interested in bipedal and quadrupedal. You may expand on special considerations for other body types if you want to go really granular with your answer, but I'm not requiring that.
• Biome: terrestrial.
• Everything Else: earth-like
• Scope: I want to stick to known science if possible, but if your list looks too stark, you may include some mildly speculative xenobiology

posted almost 6 years ago

Arash Howaida‭

1 reputation 36 0 0 0