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Fordim Hedgethistle · 06-14-2004, 09:19 PM

As to the voracious appetites of hobbits, and their great variation in size:

It's actually entirely realistic that hobbits would eat so much: the smaller the mammal, the greater its requirement for food (in terms of the ratio between food-mass and body-mass). Smaller bodies mean smaller stomachs and intestinal tracks; they also mean much faster metabolisms (large bodies stay warm more easily as they have a lower surface area to volume ratio) -- so, the smaller the mammal, the more it needs to eat. Mice can eat 2-3 times their body weight each day! Even rabbits can crunch their way through more food than their own weight in a day.

The size variation is also perfectly normal. The analogy you draw, Phantom, between hobbits (two to four feet in height) and humans (three to six) is actually not entirely accurate. The varation in height between hobbits is two feet (from maximum to minimum) which means one foot above and below the average height of three feet. In humans, the variation is also about two feet (between 6 1/2 feet and 4 1/2 feet) with an average height of 5 1/2 feet. The only reason the variation 'looks' larger in hobbits is due to the lower median height. The difference between the tallest hobbit and the shortest is the same as the difference between the tallest human and the shortest (this is excluding, obviously, those who fall outside the human averages -- they are, please excuse the slightly insulting term, which isn't mine: aberrations; actually, presumably, there must be such abberations among hobbits too -- a hobbit small-person ("midget") could conceivably be only one foot tall! a hobbit tall-person ("giant") could be as much as six feet tall! This is of course, translating human proportions into hobbit proportions as Tolkien gives them here).

This is all meant to be pretty tongue in cheek, I suppose, but at the same time I think it's interesting that these 'fairy-tale' beings that Tolkien has subcreated are perfectly, logically and naturally in line with the laws of physiology and anatomy in our primary world!

06-14-2004, 09:19 PM	#39
Fordim Hedgethistle Gibbering Gibbet Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Beyond cloud nine Posts: 1,844	Hobbits and eating As to the voracious appetites of hobbits, and their great variation in size: It's actually entirely realistic that hobbits would eat so much: the smaller the mammal, the greater its requirement for food (in terms of the ratio between food-mass and body-mass). Smaller bodies mean smaller stomachs and intestinal tracks; they also mean much faster metabolisms (large bodies stay warm more easily as they have a lower surface area to volume ratio) -- so, the smaller the mammal, the more it needs to eat. Mice can eat 2-3 times their body weight each day! Even rabbits can crunch their way through more food than their own weight in a day. The size variation is also perfectly normal. The analogy you draw, Phantom, between hobbits (two to four feet in height) and humans (three to six) is actually not entirely accurate. The varation in height between hobbits is two feet (from maximum to minimum) which means one foot above and below the average height of three feet. In humans, the variation is also about two feet (between 6 1/2 feet and 4 1/2 feet) with an average height of 5 1/2 feet. The only reason the variation 'looks' larger in hobbits is due to the lower median height. The difference between the tallest hobbit and the shortest is the same as the difference between the tallest human and the shortest (this is excluding, obviously, those who fall outside the human averages -- they are, please excuse the slightly insulting term, which isn't mine: aberrations; actually, presumably, there must be such abberations among hobbits too -- a hobbit small-person ("midget") could conceivably be only one foot tall! a hobbit tall-person ("giant") could be as much as six feet tall! This is of course, translating human proportions into hobbit proportions as Tolkien gives them here). This is all meant to be pretty tongue in cheek, I suppose, but at the same time I think it's interesting that these 'fairy-tale' beings that Tolkien has subcreated are perfectly, logically and naturally in line with the laws of physiology and anatomy in our primary world! Last edited by Fordim Hedgethistle; 06-14-2004 at 09:25 PM.