If a single picture speaks a thousand words, then how many words do two pictures side-by-side speak? Answering that question is partly what this post is all about. By comparing two pictures, we can gain a better understanding of the size, shape, and nature of the world around us.
For example, if you want to get a visual of how big a blue whale is, then place that blue whale next to a human. Or, if you want to understand how a tree changes, then take a picture of it at different times of the year. The 39 comparisons below take that comparative approach to help us better appreciate ourselves and the world.
We can understand how enormous a blue whale is by reminding ourselves that their tongues weigh as much as elephants. However, another way to grok their size is to look at a picture of a blue whale next to a human.
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Luckily, that’s exactly what this fearless swimmer allows us to do. Since we know the average size of a human, placing one next to a blue whale really brings home what 100 feet long and 400,000 pounds means.
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This next picture helps us see how looks get passed down from generation to generation. On the left side is a 61-year-old grandmother, and on the right side is her 12-year-old granddaughter. The fact that they can be so seamlessly blended is remarkable.
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It also makes a lot of sense – “you’ve got your grandma’s eyes” we often say. Some of the more unique traits that get passed on include freckles and widow’s peaks, both examples of what geneticists call dominant alleles.
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If you’ve ever hung up a hummingbird feeder on your porch and watched through the window, then you’re well aware of just how tiny these precious creatures can be. At an average length of 3 to 5 inches, they are some of the smallest birds around.
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That size mixed with its lightning-speed wings and fast metabolism requires hummingbirds to spend most of their day eating. Alongside the nectar of 1,000 to 2,000 flowers, they also eat ants, insects, and beetles daily.
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Puppies grow, inanimate objects don’t. Although it might sound obvious, it doesn’t register in our brains until we see it side by side. Luckily, the gorgeous photo below allows us to see how Elliot the Great Dane and his stuffed dragon buddy have changed over the years.
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In the first photo, Elliot was a four-week-old puppy. In the second photo, Elliot was a two-year-old dog. While the dragon stayed the size and age, Elliot grew to over 2.6 feet tall.
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One day the photographer Jozef Morgoš decided to walk out to a hill in Slovakia and snap a photo of a cherry tree. A few months later, he returned to take another picture, and then again two more times. Over the year, he snapped four photos of the same tree from the same angle.
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The result is the photograph above – a visual monument to the annual changes the cherry tree and landscape go through in this rural part of Slovakia.
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When compared to the size of a human body and the length of a human life, Sequoia trees seem to be from another world entirely. For example, the giant Sequoia – aptly called “big tree” by the environmentalist John Muir – has an average height of 164 to 279 feet.
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Not only that, but in terms of lifespan, Sequoias trump us. The oldest human was a little more than 120 years old. The oldest Sequoia lived to be over 3,200 years old!
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Mussels, if you allow us a bad pun, can muscle through a lot of dirty water. That’s the gist of the comparison-picture/science experiment seen below.
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The top picture shows two aquariums filled with dirty water. One has mussels, and the other doesn’t. The bottom picture shows the same two dirty-water aquariums after a bit of time has passed. Can you guess which one had the mussels? Amazingly, a single mussel feeds on enough microbes to filter 10 gallons of water a day!
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In the early part of William Utermohlen’s career, he painted Dante’s Inferno and scenes from his early memories. In 1995, however, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and decided to use his artistic talent to capture what was happening.
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The result is a series of self-portraits. In 1996, a year after his diagnosis, he could recognize his face. By 2000, a year before his final portrait, it was all a blur. Medical students have studied these to better understand the inner experience of people with Alzheimer’s.
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Russel Crowe captured something special in the following comparison photos he shared on Twitter. The first shows just how devastating fire can be for a landscape – it burns it to a crisp. The second photo, however, shows how powerful a little rainfall can be.
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After only a few days of rain, the landscape was transformed. The blackened ground turned into green grass, and everything seems to have an extra shine to it. It seems like Nature knows how to keep everything in balance.
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