Scientists Debate Who Would Really Win Godzilla vs. King Kong
The outcome may be different than the movie’s clash of the titans.
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Two days before the release of 2021’s most highly anticipated grudge match,
Godzilla vs. King Kong, there’s a much smaller battle taking place across my screen.
Nathaniel J. Dominy and
Ryan Calsbeek share much in common—they’re colleagues, scientists, Dartmouth professors—but their areas of expertise weren’t an existential threat to their friendship until recently. One of them (Nathaniel) studies primates, the other (Ryan) reptiles and amphibians.
In 2019 over coffee, the two professors forged a bond when they realized
they could write a paper examining Godzilla’s evolutionary growth in cinema dating back to the 1954 original. They each grew up with the original versions of the characters. Ryan watched the black-and-white Godzilla movies as a kid on Saturdays, while Nathaniel saw them as a teenager while watching
Mystery Science Theater 3000. But there’s a difference between collaborating on a piece solely about Godzilla and weighing in on a battle royale between lizards and apes. So when the two logged onto Zoom, a conversation ostensibly about using science to settle a decades-long debate quickly became a way for each to hash out their relationships with the iconic monsters.
Nathaniel and Ryan looked at three main areas that would impact a fight between Godzilla and Kong: anatomy, geography, and intelligence. (Previous matchups between the two titans were used as evidence since the latest movie wasn’t yet released during the time of the interview.) We’ll try our best to avoid spoilers, at least until the end.
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/202...aleontologists