If Godzilla Were Real, How Much Would He Eat?

The newest Godzilla is quite the beast. According to the official source, Legendary pictures, Godzilla is 355 feet tall. That's about the height of a 40-story building! It's also the tallest Godzilla yet (according to Wikizilla; yes, there are such sites). So, how much does such an animal need to eat to survive?

To answer that question we'll use Kleiber's Law: an animal's basal calorie requirement E (the least amount of calories needed to be eaten in a day to sustain life for a minimally active organism) is related to its mass M (in kilograms) by the equation

We need Godzilla's mass. There's no scale I know of that we could use, and I wouldn't be comfortable asking him directly. Maybe that's why Popular Mechanics took the easy way out and asked scientists to estimate some of Godzilla's features. The consensus on his mass: about 160,000 tons, or about as heavy as a cruise ship!

Okay, back to the calculation. Godzilla's mass in kilograms is 160,000,000 kg, making his daily calorie requirement roughly...

99,500,000 calories!

Maybe this explains why he's always eating everything in sight!

(And also why Hollywood -- and the original creator of Godzilla -- made him eat nuclear energy for food.)

Truth be told, I'm not sure how applicable Kleiber's Law is to Godzilla. It does, however, accurately describe the relationship of mass to energy requirements for everything from cells to elephants. That's a pretty amazing feat for just one equation. And, aside from the absurdly large appetite Godzilla has, it's the one other thing I hope you'll take away from this article.