Matter
Eater Lad first appeared in Adventure Comics #303 (1962). In the 30th Century,
Tenzil Kem was sent from the planet Bismoll to represent his home world in the
Legion of Superheroes. On Bismoll microbes had made all food inedible, and so
the Bismollians evolved the ability to eat all matter. Matter Eater Lad can eat
any amount of any substance at super-speed. Writers have struggled to find
anything for Matter Eater Lad to do over the years – there’s only so many times
you can have a character escape a cage by eating the bars. As a result he is
often written out of the stories by being drafted into his home planet’s
political system. It’s a literal case of “I have to go now, my planet needs me!”
When I
first started to consider how Tenzil’s powers might work in real life I thought
I might find the answers with goats! Like a lot of people I was under the
impression that goats could eat the shirt off your back if they wanted to.
Could Matter Eater Lad be a kind of human goat?
In actual
fact, no he couldn’t be. The idea that goats can eat anything is a myth. Goats
are in fact incredibly picky eaters. The idea that they’ll eat anything comes
from the fact they are browsers. They will root through their potential meals
to find whatever they think will give them the most nutrition, even if it means
digging around in rubbish. A goat may well rip the shirt off your back and have
a chew on it but they would probably spit it out after a while once they’d decided
there was no goodness to be had from it.
Matter
Eater Lad may not be a goat-man, but there is another member of the animal
kingdom who echoes his abilities.
Crocodilians,
a group which includes alligators and crocodile, are far from picky eaters. Crocodiles
eat fish, amphibians, crustaceans, molluscs, birds, reptiles, and mammals, and even
smaller crocodiles. Certain types of crocodile have been known to eat, sharks,
wild boar, big cats, elephants, and hippos. Young alligators and crocodiles
have been observed eating up to 23% of their bodyweight in the lab in just one
sitting. That’s like a 70 kilogram (or 11 stone) person eating a 17 kilogram
(or 3 stone) turkey in one meal. There have even been seeds found in their poo,
suggesting that they also eat fruit! They can and will eat anything and they
don’t leave leftovers. If you're feeling particularly brave type "Crocodile eating" into Youtube for some examples.
Crocodiles have
evolved sharp teeth for piercing and holding onto flesh, and powerful muscles
to close the jaws and hold them shut. They have the strongest bite of any
animal. But it’s their hearts and their stomachs that really make them such
successful eaters.
Crocodiles
have the most acidic stomach of any vertebrate. It can close off a part of its
heart on the right side and use a part of its heart on the left side to flush
blood loaded with carbon dioxide from its muscles directly to its stomach. This
makes its blood supply extra acidic, which in turn makes it much easier for the
stomach lining to secrete more stomach acid to quickly dissolve a lot of flesh
and bone.
Crocodiles’
stomachs are also divided up into two sections. The first section is a muscular
pocket where the crocodiles keep any rocks that they might eat. All the hard
bits of their prey tend to remain in this area of the stomach for a few days at
a time. Once the bones are thoroughly crushed, they transfer over to the next
section of the stomach to finish up the digestion process. This process,
combined with the acidity of the stomach, means that every single part of the
crocodiles’ prey gets digested, including bones, horns, scales and hooves.
Matter
Eater Lad could well be a sort of grotesque crocodile-man, if he actually
existed. It’s worth remembering though, since crocodiles get so much from their
prey, they don’t need to eat as often as other animals. Crocodiles usually eat
about once a week, although they have been known, in extreme situations, to live
off their own tissue for up to three years. If Matter Eater Lad was a human
crocodile, you’d have to hope that he hadn’t eaten recently if you expected him
to free you from a cage by eating the bars. Or on second thoughts maybe it
would be better if he had eaten recently, just in case you started to look
particularly tasty to him.
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