Physical Laws and Animal Form Imagine seeing a winged serpent several meters long and ‘weighing hundreds of kilograms flying through the air. Fortu- nately, you wont experience such a horrifying sight outside of a movie. Physical requirements constrain what natural selec- tion can “invent,” including the size and shape af flying ani- mals, An animal the size and shape of a mythical dragon could not generate enough lift with its wings to get off the ground. ‘Thisis just one example of how physical laws—in this ease, the physics of flight—timit che evolution of an organisms form. ‘Consider another example: how the laws of hydrodynamics constrain the shapes that are possible for aquatic animals that swim very fast, Water is about a thousand times denser than air, thus, any bump on the body surface that causes drag would im- pede a swimmer even more than it would a runner or a flyer. (b) Shark (©) Penguin (@) Dolphin (@) Seat A Figure 40.2 Evolutionary convergence in fast swimmers. Tuna and other fast ray-finned fishes can swim at speeds up to 80 km/hr. Sharks, penguins (birds), and aquatic mammals such as dolphins, seals, and whales are also fast swimmers, These animals all have the same streamlined body form: a fusi- form shape, which means tapered on both ends (Figure 40.2), “The fact that these speedy swimmers have similar shapes is an ‘example of convergent evolution (see Chapter 25). Conver- gence occurs because natural selection shapes similar adapta tions when diverse organisms face the same environmental challenge, such as the resistance of water to fast travel Exchange with the Environment An animals size and shape have a direct effect on how the animal exchanges energy and materials with its surroundings. An ani- mal’ body plan must allow all ofits living cells to be bathed in aan aqueous medium, a requirement for maintaining the fluid integrity of the plasma membranes, Exchange with the environ: ment occurs as substances dissolved in the aqueous medium dif- fuse and are transported across the cells’ plasma membranes. As shown in Figure 40.3a, a single-celled protist living in water has a sufficient surface area of plasma membrane to service its entire volume of cytoplasm, (Thus, surface-to-volume ratio is one of the physical constraints on the size of single-celled protists.) Multicellular animals are composed of numerous cells, each with its own plasma membrane that functions as a loading and unloading platiorm for a modest volume of cytoplasm. But this organization only works if all the cells of the animal have access toa suitable aqueous environment. A hydra, which has a saclike body plan, has a body wall only two cell layers thick (Figure 40.36). Because its gastrovascular cav- ity opens to the exterior, both outer and inner layers of cells are Diffusion, (a) Single cell (b) Two cell layers ‘4 Figure 40.3 Contact with the environment. (a) In 2 uniceler prot such as this amoebe, the entire surface area Contacts the environment. (b) A hydra’s body consists of two layers of calls Because the aqueous environment can circulate in and out of the hrydras mouth, tually everyone of ts cells crectly contacts the environment and exchanges materials wth it. chaPTER 40. Basic Principles of Animal Form and Function 821