Amusing thought

[Telchar]

there flew down from the high airs Thorondor, King of Eagles, mightiest of all birds that have ever been, whose outstretched wings spanned thirty fathoms

Most of you have read this line. Did you ever find it fasinating? I mean thats ONE BIG BIRDY!!! Well I always did, but not until today did I measure it against other things we know, for example:

Thirdy fanthoms is equivelent to some 57 meters or 62,5 yards.
In comparison we have two well know war airplanes:

The Spitfire: wingspan 11.2 meters
B-52 Bomber: wingspan 56,3 meters

We dont have to start a discussion about this, but it does raise other amusing aspects, such as: airstrips in ME, how much space did Thorondor need to land?

[img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[Maéglin]

Another thing.. how did the Great Eagles hunt? You would think that they would be a little big to swoop down on their prey in the forests... which also brings to mind what/how much do they eat? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[NightKnight]

Thorondor obviously tried to eat Morgoth, after he killed Fingolfin. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Telchar]

In further comparison, a bald headed eagle weighs some 10-14 pounds, and has a wing span on 2 meters - which means that Thorondor weighed around 400 pounds!!! Furthermore eagles eat some 5-10% of their bodyweight each day, meaning that Thorodor would have to eat ca 30 pounds of meat! - I dont know anything about Ainur body weight, but Morgoth could probably last for weeks [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Another thought would be the conversation when Fingon cut Maedhros hand of.....

Thorondor: Yeah, yeah, come on Fingon, you can do it! Cut it off!!! Can I have it? can I? Im soooo hungry!!!

[ October 27, 2003: Message edited by: Telchar ]

[Telchar]

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Great pic, Telchar [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
I thought his size when I last read that line but didn't realize how huge Thorondor was until you compared him to aeroplanes.

[Scott]

Thinking along the lines of what Thorondor would eat... what couldn't he eat?
The typical bird of prey that I've seen can muster the strength to carry away pretty good sized rodents. What would Thoronor be able to caarry away for a meal?... would it be unusual to see him flying around at night with an Oelephant in his beak? ...Or perhaps a nice sized tree for a light dinner salad.

[Earendilyon]

Maybe he ate Orcs and Goblins and such as his part of the war against terro... err .... Sauron.

[The Saucepan Man]

While I can appreciate that Thorondir was such a size, I should imagine Gwaihir and his kin were much smaller. Certainly, I always imagined them as the size of maybe a light aircraft. And surely they would have been unable to pick up Bilbo and the Dwarves in their claws (without crushing them at least) had they been of Thorondic proportions.

Is there any indication of Gwaihir and co's size, or any suggestion that they had dwindled in size since Thorondir's time?

[Gwaihir the Windlord]

Probably there is some indication to be found in the Hobbit. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Hmmm... perhaps 'thirty fathoms' was simply used unthinkinkingly, sort of just to demonstrate a huge wingspan that wasn't actually quite that big. Still. Maybe his size was linked to his anger, much like Beorn?

[Kalimac]

Well, for indirect indications, there's the fact that in "The Hobbit" Gwaihir et al don't want to fly over inhabited areas for fear that the men might shoot at them with their bows. If they were even close to Thorondir-sized, that would probably not be a concern, because (a) one regular-sized arrow in a bird that large would probably have as much effect as a beesting on a 777, and (b) if you were a man, would you really want to try and catch the attention of a bird that size? Aside from the fact that it could swallow you without blinking, suppose you did succeed by some miracle in shooting it down? It could destroy your house if it landed in the wrong place, and even if it didn't, that's one enormous carcase to dispose of.

Not to say that Gwaihir wasn't large, I just doubt he was *that* large.

[Voralphion]

) one regular-sized arrow in a bird that large would probably have as much effect as a beesting on a 777

I think it would have more effect than that, Smaug was brought down by a single arrow,and though he was possibly smaller than Thorodor, it wouldn't have been by much.

[Essex]

Not that I want this thread to be bogged down in scientific debate (I'll leave that to any threads that mentioned gandalf's fall and him catching up with glamdring!!!), but I've heard that there is a physical limit to the size of land animals (ie I think the large dinasours, diplidocus etc, where about as big as they could get. any bigger and they would have collapsed under their own body weight).

Is there a correlation/limit to the size of a bird I wonder? ie once it gets too heavy it wouldn't matter HOW long the wings are, it couldn't take off?

Apologies if this is boring..........

[Finwe]

You've got a point there. Since the bones of birds are hollow, a bird could only carry so much weight before its bones just collapsed. Even if its wingspan was thirty fathoms, its skeleton would have to be hellishly strong to support all that muscle, sinew, etc.

[Knight of Gondor]

And imagine the size of the...no, I won't say it. But I WILL quote an old poem my Mom quotes once in a while:

Birdy birdy in the sky; drop a bomber in my eye; I don't mind when you fly by; but I'm sure glad that cows don't fly!

[Kalimac]

Knight - that honestly hadn't occurred to me. Ugh. No time-travel back to the dinosaur era for me, thanks!

Voralphion - I agree that it would be possible at the outside to bring a bird that size down, but I really don't think that ordinary arrows would do it. Bard was very lucky to bring down Smaug - he shot him in the ONE place that could have even damaged him, and even then he had the assistance of his black homing arrow which had been in the family for generations. Also Smaug was much closer to the ground - it would have been hard for him to wreak fiery havoc and destruction from 5,000 feet in the air. As for how big he was - well, there's no way to know. But he could get out of the Lonely Mountain somehow, and the entrances, while large, probably weren't hangar-sized.

In the end it's sort of a moot point, because as everyone's been pointing out, it does seem unlikely that a bird could be the size of a jetliner and still get off the ground. OTOH, Shelob is also anatomically impossible - past a certain size (a much smaller one than she achieves), a spider's legs would simply not be able to support its own weight and would collapse. But that doesn't take away from her impressiveness any. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]