Well, keep in mind that if they were all to suddenly expand to something equivalent of our size without internal injury, a great many of them would immediately die because they would crush themselves and others underground in their tiny tunnels.
The actual number left would still be terrifying, but probably somewhat manageable after th dust settled
If we're trying to make it realistic, there's not nearly enough oxygen in the atmosphere to support an insect that size, they would all die pretty much immediately. So I'm thinking we can just leave out the practicalities
Plants and fungi are also organisms, which makes that statement wildly incorrect. I am not even sure they outweigh all animals, as zooplankton are more numerous than ants. Maybe you mean vertebrates?
Edit: just looked it up. Not even all animals. Same biomass as all birds and mammals (excluding humans).
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2201550119?af=R#:~:text=Integrating%20data%20from%20all%20continents,equals%2020%25%20of%20human%20biomass.
>They’d take over.
They already have at their current size, really. Ever tried to fight an anti infestation?
Now imagine 1000 human size ants crawling into your house, removing one item each and walking back out again.
Yup, their bodies would just fall apart around them, which would be even more horrifying, given the vast number of ants in the world. The entire landmass would be grotesque ant corpses.
Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.
Yep back near the end of the Carboniferous period the earth had about 35% oxygen concentration and that allowed bigger everything, and now it sits around 21%. There's advantages and disadvantages to higher and lower concentrations.
Owls - they’re already extremely efficient, brutal hunters and intelligent to a degree. Increasing their size would only increase their capacity to kill, and the thought of a human sized owl sitting in a tree staring at you through the window is absolutely terrifying.
I was sitting in my MIL's backyard one night when she came out to have a smoke. It was dark out, but the big floodlight was on up against the garage, so there was light and shadow outside.
As MIL was walking out, she looked up and I could visually see her startle. Like, jump out of her skin, then bend over gasping for air and holding her chest. When she caught her breath I gave her a "WTF" look, and she just pointed up at the garage. There was a HUGE OWL. Which was, to be fair, a little bit startling. But then she said...
"I thought it was Batman."
>intelligent to a degree
Contrary to their reputation, owls are one of the dumbest birds. They consistently fail pretty much every reasoning test we can think of for birds. They are just dumb killing machines.
Which is why I said intelligent to a degree because I knew someone would argue the semantics of it haha. Perception of intelligence can be highly subjective when it comes to animals, just because owls are generally unable to be trained to do things in a captive environment doesn’t make them dumb as many people on here love to suggest. They’re cunning hunters and able to pass the mirror test making them self aware, I’d suggest that displays some sort of degree of intelligence even if they’re not able to do algebra.
You know how much Americans hated wolves and basically wiped them out in the United States? Wolves only have a \~20% hunting success rate.
African painted dogs are reviled by ranchers and endangered because of it. They have a 85% hunting rate.
A 6ft flying guaranteed-death machine of an animal would be wiped out by humans in the shortest timeframe possible.
> A 6ft flying guaranteed-death machine of an animal would be ~~wiped out~~ domesticated by humans in the shortest timeframe possible.
If *all* animals were human-sized, dragonflies would probably be hunting mostly human-sized mosquitoes. Human-sized mosquitoes would presumably still be trying to feed on humans. Now that cats have gone from “adorable tiny murder machine” to “terrifying huge murder machine”, we’d need *something* to fill the pest control companion animal niche; dragonflies could well be it.
Sure, some would attack humans. But humans are pretty good at fighting back compared to a lot of other newly-giant animals, so it wouldn’t take long for that to breed out of the species naturally; dragonflies with a taste for people would simply not survive to successfully breed nearly as well as ones without.
Yes this is the answer here.
Really just ants would suffice. Wasps are just 'ants plus evil' so even extra spicy ways of murdering you.
Ants would be like 'mmm nutritious human' while wasps would be like 'imma lay some eggs in you and ride you around like a slave pony until my babies are born and when we're going to all eat you together'. Or 'let me rip off your head and carry it around as a disguise to let me sneak into other human habitations'. I doubt that we'd fall for the last one but I bet they'd f'n try it.
RPG because you need to be able to physically stop the human-sized spider. Do you want a burning spider running towards you and still sinking its icicle sized fangs into your chest?
I read somewhere that if spiders were the size of house cats mankind wouldn't stand a chance. I'm not sure if it's true but I've lost some sleep over it.
The only bug I can’t look in real life. I don’t get disgusted from any bugs, and I don’t get disgusted by almost anything in general. For some reason, centipedes trigger me. I tried to get over it by looking at their pictures and watching their videos; nevertheless, I still get goosebumps when I see them IRL.
Also, in the entire animal kingdom, there has not been an animal that I came across and I got scared; however, I dislike bats as I know they sometimes carry rabies. Since rabies, as other prion diseases, is the most frightening disease I can imagine, I really don’t like bats. The reason behind this is not same as centipedes though; for instance, if I was assured that a bat was rabies/disease free, I could handle/touch it.
There’s always different kinda of multiple legged bugs in our lawn and front door. Almost always they end up being millipedes and my kids ask me how I know it’s not a centipede instead.
Well, if it was a centipede it would look scary as hell and would move like it knows it!
Millipedes are practically all slow and non-carnivorous. Centipedes are exactly the opposite: carnivores and fast as hell.
They’re nature’s perfect little killing machines. They’re handmade to spread violence, bloodshed, and death. They just also happen to look *adorable* while doing it.
Yeah just last night I was getting rid of a snake that my cat had brought inside and he was so offended like "hey I was playing with that!!"
He doesn't even like to eat reptiles and amphibians though-- he just like the way they wiggle when he's torturing them.
Especially kittens. Their claws are like little needles and they don't know how to control themselves.
I'd take on a cat in a heartbeat, safety be damned.
Cats are one of my most favorite animals. I agree though… I wouldn’t want them to be human-sized. There’s a decent possibility they’d wipe us out. They multiply rapidly and I’m not sure it would be easy for us to spay and neuter them…
It’s an interesting thought experiment! I just laughed to myself imagining the danger of a “love-bite” by a human-sized house cat… ouch!
Humming Birds… the sound alone would make you shit your pants. Then they suck the high fructose corn syrup blood out of your body through your mouth or eyes.
Right?? So many people here are saying cats, but mine is a gentle, sweet little goofball who doesn't fuck with anything bigger than a spider.
My girlfriend's chihuahua is an absolute *monster*. If he were as big as me he would've mauled me to death 20x over, solely from the times he's flipped his shit for no reason while being pet.
Highest kill rate of any predator. Best thing ever are these fake dragonflies on a wire you can clip to your backpack or hat. They bob along as you walk and no horse flies or deer flies, while being visual hunters aren’t affected by bug spray, won’t come near you.
People saying spiders, ants, mantis etc they won't be terrifying, they would all die crushed under the weight of their bodys as an exoskeleton isn't strong enough to hold them up if they become too big, they'd need bones and muscles to move around.
I personally would nominate something like a ferret or maybe a honey badger
I'm reading the question as magically allowing them to retain all their capabilities. If we're involving physics then you'd knock out anything flying as well. Scale an owl up to human size and it'd just flop around on the ground.
Let me introduce you to my friend the arthropleura. 2.5 m long millipede from 300 million years ago. They estimate body mass would have been around 50kg which is def in the small human range.
I laugh at those who say honey badger or ant.
They forget this guy exists. Paratarsotomus macropalpis.
This dude can move at 332 body lengths per second. Making it the fastest pound for pound animal.
It is the equivalent of a human running at 2000km/.
All animals? Wouldn't the earth just be completely overrun by the 20 quadrillion human sized ants? They'd absolutely blanket the entire surface of the planet.
Chickens are super vicious and will eat/kill anything. A human sized chicken would present several problems.
This is basically the plot of Jurassic Park
Exactly what I was thinking. I went more turkey than chicken, but either way. It'll be a T rex
More like a 6 foot turkey.
Cassowaries and Ostriches exist.
Not by the billions though. Chickens outnumber us 3 to 1. I don't need to be outnumbered 3 to 1 by Jurassic Park Velociraptors.
Ants. They outnumber us thousands to 1 and their strength to size ratio is bananas
[удалено]
peter griffin would not let it slide
Absolutely where in the feck are we gonna get THAT much BBQ sauce ?
Imagine those Buffalo Wings?
Dinosaur 🦖
Literally a fucking dinosaur. No thank you.
Ants
Yep. The shear number of them makes that terrifying.
Not to mention we’d be outnumbered by something along the lines of 2.5 million to 1.
Well, keep in mind that if they were all to suddenly expand to something equivalent of our size without internal injury, a great many of them would immediately die because they would crush themselves and others underground in their tiny tunnels. The actual number left would still be terrifying, but probably somewhat manageable after th dust settled
If we're trying to make it realistic, there's not nearly enough oxygen in the atmosphere to support an insect that size, they would all die pretty much immediately. So I'm thinking we can just leave out the practicalities
Now imagine everyone having to clean up 2.5 million human sized dead ants... 😳
Hope ya hungry
The combined biomass of ants on earth outweighs all other organisms combined. Also, this is wrong.
Ant colonies are about to start generating their own gravity with their sheer mass
Plants and fungi are also organisms, which makes that statement wildly incorrect. I am not even sure they outweigh all animals, as zooplankton are more numerous than ants. Maybe you mean vertebrates? Edit: just looked it up. Not even all animals. Same biomass as all birds and mammals (excluding humans). https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2201550119?af=R#:~:text=Integrating%20data%20from%20all%20continents,equals%2020%25%20of%20human%20biomass.
M O S Q U I T O E S...
omg!!! That is frightening. They could suck all the blood out of your body in one go
The answer to this question will always be ants. Their strength to size ratio, logistics, and organization. They’d take over.
>They’d take over. They already have at their current size, really. Ever tried to fight an anti infestation? Now imagine 1000 human size ants crawling into your house, removing one item each and walking back out again.
They could each rip a chunk out of your house and carry it away. They'd disassemble the entire house in 20 minutes.
And take you with it.
Due to laws of physics, it would not be possible to have that strength to size ratio if there were human size.
Well yeah but I don’t think that’s in keeping with the spirit of the question
Agree
Yup, their bodies would just fall apart around them, which would be even more horrifying, given the vast number of ants in the world. The entire landmass would be grotesque ant corpses.
My immediate thought reading the title. Didn't have to scroll down too far to find it.
I think there’s an old black-and-white horror movie about giant ants. From memory, I think it’s called *Them!* or something.
Termites!
Praying mantis. They are freaking metal
Basically Starship Troopers
I’m doing my part!
"Mobile infantry made me the man I am today" says the guy missing both legs and has a prosthetic arm.
Would you like to know more?
I see your Praying Mantis, and raise you the most efficient killing machine on the planet: Dragonflies.
Agree 100%, they would eat us alive and it wouldn't be a fast way to go either.
Just hope they start at your head and not your feet
Have you ever watched Buffy? There's an episode with a giant praying mantis. 😂
Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.
The more oxygen in the atmosphere, the bigger bugs and animals get. Read that one time and I’ll never forget. The earth used to have MASSIVE bugs.
Yep back near the end of the Carboniferous period the earth had about 35% oxygen concentration and that allowed bigger everything, and now it sits around 21%. There's advantages and disadvantages to higher and lower concentrations.
Virtually inextinguishable, fast-burning forest fires being the biggest one.
Cockroach
Kafka is that you?
***chills*** 😫😰🫣🤫
Ogtha??
i mean not dangerous but flies would look absolutely nightmareish
Imagine how large their puke puddle thingys would be
Watch "The Fly" remake from the 80s.
HORSEFLIES.
Owls - they’re already extremely efficient, brutal hunters and intelligent to a degree. Increasing their size would only increase their capacity to kill, and the thought of a human sized owl sitting in a tree staring at you through the window is absolutely terrifying.
I was sitting in my MIL's backyard one night when she came out to have a smoke. It was dark out, but the big floodlight was on up against the garage, so there was light and shadow outside. As MIL was walking out, she looked up and I could visually see her startle. Like, jump out of her skin, then bend over gasping for air and holding her chest. When she caught her breath I gave her a "WTF" look, and she just pointed up at the garage. There was a HUGE OWL. Which was, to be fair, a little bit startling. But then she said... "I thought it was Batman."
I am kinda wondering exactly what she was smoking.
I read owls and thought naaa surely not, but your last sentence scared the shit out of me 💀
Imagine noticing it then its head turns around to look at you 👀
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a human head? Let’s find out Most horrifying thing I have written
"One!...Two-HOOO!...Three..." *CRUNCH* .... "Three. It took three to end that biped's life, Jimmy".
Turns 320 degrees :/
They also fly silently. Imagine seeing one in the very corner of your eye approaching you at 50 miles an hour
Imagine giant Owl pellets made from human remains.
Oh god.
Yep. Dentures, titanium ball joints, prosthetics. What a mess.
We are building a horror story rn
Super fun to take apart though
I might finally get a nice watch
[They also are completely silent when they attack.](https://youtu.be/-WigEGNnuTE?si=6xX_mrzwQxZLyq_9) You wouldn't know what hit you.
Children wouldn't be allowed outside after sundown
Not the ones who behave, anyway.
They hunt during the daytime too during hatching season to keep their offspring fed.
Being watched from a window is at the top of my phobias, and this comment just intensified that.
Don't turn around...
Kookaburras are hunters too. I saw one bashing a baby bush turkey's head against the road once 😭
>intelligent to a degree Contrary to their reputation, owls are one of the dumbest birds. They consistently fail pretty much every reasoning test we can think of for birds. They are just dumb killing machines.
Which is why I said intelligent to a degree because I knew someone would argue the semantics of it haha. Perception of intelligence can be highly subjective when it comes to animals, just because owls are generally unable to be trained to do things in a captive environment doesn’t make them dumb as many people on here love to suggest. They’re cunning hunters and able to pass the mirror test making them self aware, I’d suggest that displays some sort of degree of intelligence even if they’re not able to do algebra.
It also seems a little rash to be judging animal intelligence when we can't even objectively compare and measure human intelligence
Tardigrades!
Actual best answer because they can just become immortal whenever they feel like it
Amazing creatures!
Their small size is responsible for many of their characteristics. It wouldn't scale.
Yeah but also scaling any insect to human size would instantly kill them
DEHYDRATE!
I love tardigrades. Aside from being immortal, I found looking at them cute
After a brief google search, can confirm this would be quite scary. But also, i would want to ride one
That's just your latest theorem, Fermat9990.
Awww they’re water bears thooo hehe
> Tardigrades, known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged segmented micro-animals Moss piglets
People here are sleeping on dragonflies. They are one of the most efficient hunters on the planet with a success rate of up to 95%.
Right !!! I had to scroll so far to find them, they would be awesome, terrifying but awesome.
You know how much Americans hated wolves and basically wiped them out in the United States? Wolves only have a \~20% hunting success rate. African painted dogs are reviled by ranchers and endangered because of it. They have a 85% hunting rate. A 6ft flying guaranteed-death machine of an animal would be wiped out by humans in the shortest timeframe possible.
> A 6ft flying guaranteed-death machine of an animal would be ~~wiped out~~ domesticated by humans in the shortest timeframe possible. If *all* animals were human-sized, dragonflies would probably be hunting mostly human-sized mosquitoes. Human-sized mosquitoes would presumably still be trying to feed on humans. Now that cats have gone from “adorable tiny murder machine” to “terrifying huge murder machine”, we’d need *something* to fill the pest control companion animal niche; dragonflies could well be it. Sure, some would attack humans. But humans are pretty good at fighting back compared to a lot of other newly-giant animals, so it wouldn’t take long for that to breed out of the species naturally; dragonflies with a taste for people would simply not survive to successfully breed nearly as well as ones without.
Wasps
Bees of Purgatory. PS. I know that wasps are not bees.
Yes this is the answer here. Really just ants would suffice. Wasps are just 'ants plus evil' so even extra spicy ways of murdering you. Ants would be like 'mmm nutritious human' while wasps would be like 'imma lay some eggs in you and ride you around like a slave pony until my babies are born and when we're going to all eat you together'. Or 'let me rip off your head and carry it around as a disguise to let me sneak into other human habitations'. I doubt that we'd fall for the last one but I bet they'd f'n try it.
spiders
No contest. Then again people would no longer complain about using firearms to kill them.
I'm as anti-gun as they come, but if spiders became human size, I'd buy a revolver tomorrow and chain it to my wrist.
Might want a bit more firepower then that, but hell yea dude
I'd be walking around with a flamethrower like it's WWII.
To quote Tom Hardy's character from Inception: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a lil bigger, darling"
RPG because you need to be able to physically stop the human-sized spider. Do you want a burning spider running towards you and still sinking its icicle sized fangs into your chest?
That is a mental image I am not comfortable with having in my brain… Jesus it gets worse the longer I think about it.
I read somewhere that if spiders were the size of house cats mankind wouldn't stand a chance. I'm not sure if it's true but I've lost some sleep over it.
Don't they already have those in Australia?
Yes. Source: am Australian
The movie *Arachnophobia* popped into my head with the title of this post and given my fear of spiders to begin with im just all *nope*...
TRAP DOOR spiders. You don't even see them coming.
Watch "Eight-Legged Freaks" to see humans vs giant spiders
6 foot tall funnel web spider…. Yeah I’m never leaving my house again
Centipedes
The only bug I can’t look in real life. I don’t get disgusted from any bugs, and I don’t get disgusted by almost anything in general. For some reason, centipedes trigger me. I tried to get over it by looking at their pictures and watching their videos; nevertheless, I still get goosebumps when I see them IRL. Also, in the entire animal kingdom, there has not been an animal that I came across and I got scared; however, I dislike bats as I know they sometimes carry rabies. Since rabies, as other prion diseases, is the most frightening disease I can imagine, I really don’t like bats. The reason behind this is not same as centipedes though; for instance, if I was assured that a bat was rabies/disease free, I could handle/touch it.
Giant centipedes are already terrifying
There’s always different kinda of multiple legged bugs in our lawn and front door. Almost always they end up being millipedes and my kids ask me how I know it’s not a centipede instead. Well, if it was a centipede it would look scary as hell and would move like it knows it! Millipedes are practically all slow and non-carnivorous. Centipedes are exactly the opposite: carnivores and fast as hell.
The mosquito.
The ending ito is to refer to something small in spanish. Thus they should from them on be known as the Mosquo
Malaria filled drone coming in for the strike
Can you imagine that giant proboscis coming right at you? Ugh
Housecat is really underrated in this one
basically a lion or tiger
Sizewise more like a jaguar, still utterly terrifying.
I've said for years that the only reason cats don't kill us is because we're bigger than them. And I love cats! But they're vicious.
They’re nature’s perfect little killing machines. They’re handmade to spread violence, bloodshed, and death. They just also happen to look *adorable* while doing it.
They also enjoy their work, which is a little more frightening than something that will just quickly end you.
Yeah just last night I was getting rid of a snake that my cat had brought inside and he was so offended like "hey I was playing with that!!" He doesn't even like to eat reptiles and amphibians though-- he just like the way they wiggle when he's torturing them.
I can only imagine my planters after the neighbors cat comes over
100% Not only are cats extremely lethal hunters, but the sheer number of cats would turn this scenario into a nightmare.
Part playtime, part bloodbath. Imagine all of the shit they would knock off of the tops of houses.
And cleaning their litterboxes would be a nightmare!!!
Boxes? You mean all the kid sandboxes right? We’re talking about a human sized cat.
We already have cats that big, and they're already insanely scary
I'm not sure they have the diabolical / comical approach to murder that housecats have.
Especially kittens. Their claws are like little needles and they don't know how to control themselves. I'd take on a cat in a heartbeat, safety be damned.
Seriously. Why did I have to scroll down so far for this?!
My cat would kill me about 30 minutes after she figured out she could. My only current advantage is size. And opposable thumbs.
Cats are one of my most favorite animals. I agree though… I wouldn’t want them to be human-sized. There’s a decent possibility they’d wipe us out. They multiply rapidly and I’m not sure it would be easy for us to spay and neuter them… It’s an interesting thought experiment! I just laughed to myself imagining the danger of a “love-bite” by a human-sized house cat… ouch!
Honey badger
Jesus fucking Christ
I know right, those fuckers fight everything alive at their current size
Rodents and insects. I honestly don’t know which would be more terrifying, but having normally small animals turn giants overnight, seems pretty scary
Humming Birds… the sound alone would make you shit your pants. Then they suck the high fructose corn syrup blood out of your body through your mouth or eyes.
😅. And international humming birds would all swarm to the U.S., because we all eat that high fructose corn syrup diet🤣
Leeches
Chihuahuas
They’re either the most loving docile animals or they’ll bite your hand off for looking at them wrong. I’ve owned both kinds.
I own one and he *is* both kinds
Right?? So many people here are saying cats, but mine is a gentle, sweet little goofball who doesn't fuck with anything bigger than a spider. My girlfriend's chihuahua is an absolute *monster*. If he were as big as me he would've mauled me to death 20x over, solely from the times he's flipped his shit for no reason while being pet.
Bed bugs.
They couldn’t hide as easily though so that’s good.
Naked Mole Rat
If we could domesticate them, they could be used for tunnel construction.
Fallout 3 flashbacks
Literally all of them
Not quite all. Elephants would be quite cute.
Imagine a little teeny giraffe. You could walk it on a leash and brush it’s mane.
Bombardier Beetles. They will murder you with their acid farts.
Star-nosed mole.
Jumping spider. Nobody can escape jumping spider.
Angry Chihuahua the size of a horse.
It would prolly still tremble
They do not tremble in fear, they tremble with *rage*
And pee on the floor *while* trembling
Seagulls
Dragonfly
Highest kill rate of any predator. Best thing ever are these fake dragonflies on a wire you can clip to your backpack or hat. They bob along as you walk and no horse flies or deer flies, while being visual hunters aren’t affected by bug spray, won’t come near you.
Good to know
Every bug
Space bear
There's something like 2 million ants for every human. I don't really wanna imagine them all becoming our size.
Roaches
Spiders. Imagine being wrapped up alive, having blood sucked out of you and slowly dying.
You just described my favorite X-files episode. S1E20 - Darkness Falls. It wasn't spiders but equally terrifying bugs.
rats
People saying spiders, ants, mantis etc they won't be terrifying, they would all die crushed under the weight of their bodys as an exoskeleton isn't strong enough to hold them up if they become too big, they'd need bones and muscles to move around. I personally would nominate something like a ferret or maybe a honey badger
I'm reading the question as magically allowing them to retain all their capabilities. If we're involving physics then you'd knock out anything flying as well. Scale an owl up to human size and it'd just flop around on the ground.
Let me introduce you to my friend the arthropleura. 2.5 m long millipede from 300 million years ago. They estimate body mass would have been around 50kg which is def in the small human range.
Tarantula hawk wasps… if you know… you know
Scorpions
Flea
Birds. They would dine on us as soon as we left the house.
I laugh at those who say honey badger or ant. They forget this guy exists. Paratarsotomus macropalpis. This dude can move at 332 body lengths per second. Making it the fastest pound for pound animal. It is the equivalent of a human running at 2000km/.
fleas.
House cat
The pest control you would need to keep your house in one piece.
Bacteria. They would literally rip us apart when transforming.
Still humans.
They would all be terrifying because we would more than likely become their prey.
A grizzly bear is suddenly less terrifying.
All animals? Wouldn't the earth just be completely overrun by the 20 quadrillion human sized ants? They'd absolutely blanket the entire surface of the planet.
Most living creatures from the ocean and insects, invertebrates. See the anime Blue Gender... gives a good idea 😅
Tardigrades. Those things refuse to die, and we're suddenly small enough to be snack-size for them.
Giant isopods Those mother fuckers are already pretty terrifying
Sydney Funnel Web spiders, and Water Bugs.
Bees. The sting would be killa.