Could a society of Kaiju exist logically?

Question

I’ve watched a lot of people place their ideas here and receive feedback, so I’ve decided to take a try.

You see, I’m planning on writing a story focusing on the relationship between humans and Kaiju through a parody of a Japanese high school setting.

I’ve already got the Kaiju in my story mostly planned out.

For one thing, the reason they exist is explained by the fact that they hail from an alternate dimension, where the laws of physics are very different from our own.

They are also sapient, being just as intelligent as humans, and have their own society.

The thing is, they very significantly in size, being about 10 m at the smallest, and 1 km at the largest.

My question is, could a society with individuals of vastly different sizes work?

Answer 1

A better and more grounded question is not with mountain-sized animals but by comparing a society of humans and small +/-18mm long creatures, which if I didnt mess up my unit conversion again would be 1/100th the size. Lets say intelligent scorpions and fairies live with us. Smart though these creatures would be, would humans really pay enough attention all the time to keep these creatures safe? Just stepping wrong could kill one. You'd have to set up the entire society with safe zones and forced segregation to keep them safe. Such forced segregation wouldnt be much of a society, with very limited area's of contact. At its core you would have dozens of societies living close to each other based on size and potential extra abilities (flight vs walking for example) but with very little contact inbetween, if only for the safety of the smaller one's.

Theres also a huge difference in economical and social capabilities. A human needs much more space in housing and transport than a small creature, but can handle larger things. Still any desk-job for an 18mm size scorpion would earn him the same as a human, but the scorion requires less light, space and infrastructure to function. The desk of one human would already be an entire office building for the tiny creatures. For other jobs like farming a human would be better... as long as automation doesnt factor in. A tractor with a miniature cabin could just as easily be steered by a small creature as a large one.

Could such a society exist? Yes, but it would be a very skewed one. The small creatures would dominate the economical market, requiring less food, space and energy for the same living and workconditions. The larger creatures would be too uneconomical for employers to build offices for and forced into manual labor that is harder to automate by the smaller population. The larger one's would hate how much money they have to pay to just stay alive while the smaller one's will have plenty of stories about accidents where the giants killed smaller one's in one way or another. Hatred and violence would be a key component of such a society, with sects on both sides using poison or brute force to sometimes kill the others.

Answer 2

OK. The simple answer is, in principle, why not? However, the size differential between the smallest and the biggest Kaiju is a factor of one hundred. Enough to cause a sharp intake of breath.

Societies by themselves aren't simple things. They are complex and multi-factorial. Complex and multi-factorial systems can accommodate a lot of variability. For example, the Kaiju might organize themselves geographically in groupings by size. This could add a whole new meaning to the commonplace phrase "the big end of town".

Also, different Kaiju might different in other ways too. Some might fly, others breath out radioactive fire, tunnel at high speed through ground, live underwater or inside volcanoes. Again this would result in different clades of Kaiju living in different places and climes.

One part of this question, it is only possible speculate about and that is what the environment is like in this alternative dimension. With right sort of environment or even environments, all kinds of Kaiju be accommodated in places suitable for them.

Societies arise when people and presumably sapient Kaiju, have a need to cooperate, to work and live together in reasonable harmony. Usually this means by living together in orderly and cooperative arrangements this advantageous to the members of the society. The advantages can economic or ecological. Living together leads to a better quality and standard of life. It enhances their survival and safety. It provides protection from predators and enemies.

Quite likely, like humans there will be a multiplicity of Kaiju societies, social and cultural institutions, and political organizations. The equivalent of our nation states. Farms producing foodstuffs. Manufacturing industries too. Even forms of entertainment, with possibly professional and amateur performers and artists.

In principle, Kaiju societies could be just as practical and beneficial as human societies. Certain factors such as the environment(s) in which they exist will also need to be considered.

Answer 3

Yes it could work.

Humans don't normally deal with size differences of the magnitude you're describing, but we deal with plenty of situations of disparate strength, especially in grade school. Ever seen a freshman nerd standing next to the senior quarterback? A 0% chance of winning a physical confrontation is still a 0% chance - doesn't matter if you're 75 kilos heavier or 750 meters taller. As long as your kaiju society can still maintain the rule of law, then this will work out alright.

Academics should be okay - the classrooms will just need a huge variety in sizes or be mostly remote.

Kaiju will develop a bit more variety in their sports in order to compensate for the differences in size. Most human sports have a great deal of variety in ideal player sizes, just look at the difference between an offensive lineman and a cornerback. The kaiju will just have more extreme versions of this. For all you know, there'll even be a sport where the smallest kaiju are used as the actual ball - probably an ocean game of some sort, for safety reasons. There could be some really fun stuff to do with that general idea - kaiju of various sizes actually participating as equipment in the sport. Some character could be useful just because they're the perfect size for the star player to use as a bat. Or the smallest kaiju play tennis and the biggest ones play football. Whatever. Even humans have weight classes.

At some point, the size difference becomes a safety issue in general - humans get along mostly okay with babies, which are small and fragile, but then again we know they eventually grow up. If small kaiju stay small, then they'll need to create their own spaces.

There could be some communication issues due to the differences in pitch likely between kaiju of different size classes, but I guess you can just physics hand-wave that.

If your society isn't very egalitarian, then you would see social strata develop, mostly based on size. Bigger is probably better.

Answer 4

Sexual dimorphism exists in the animal kingdom as can be seen for example in elephant seals and the Green Spoonworm,

but nothing on the scale that you describe exists on Earth and certainly not between individuals of the same sex.

The fact that something does not appear on Earth does not rule it out, but it should give pause for thought. I suggest that there is no absolute prohibition on such extreme variation; however it would require some very unusual and extreme selection pressures for such a situation to evolve.

Given that your creatures are from another dimension almost any forces might be at work and could well cause this so it seems to be entirely plausible.

Note a bigger difficulty would be in physical contact or even communication between humans and the Kaiju as the environment they live in is based on a very different physics. The real problem is in establishing what the alternative physics is, ensuring that it is self-consistent and dreaming up a method whereby there is some mechanism for communication that does not lead to a catastrophic situation. Two types of physics would not sit well together and I suggest would lead to the generation of black holes, gravitational distortions or some other run away effect that would swamp your story.