Could Tinker Bell exist?

Could Tinker Bell exist? This captivating question was a focus of a recent cover story in the student-led publication UoA Scientific.

Viewing imaginary creatures through the lens of real-world biology is a creative challenge for students in a fourth-year School of Biological Sciences paper taught by Professor Tony Hickey. Mermaids, dragons – you never know what you’ll investigate in BIOSCI 725: Ecological Physiology.

How animals survive in diverse and extreme habitats is a focus of the course, including situations such as metabolic arrest (hibernation), low-oxygen environments, and a warming world. Long-distance seabird migration and the question of whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded are topics, along with why birds (modern dinosaurs) live so long.

In a one-off assignment each year, students are also given the task of imagining the physiology of a mythical creature.

In his UoA Scientific article, Aryan ‘Ari’ Muzumdar – a former student in Tony’s class now studying for a postgraduate diploma in biosecurity and conservation – blends scientific principles and whimsy to explore the intricacies of how Tinker Bell might flutter into reality. For this, he draws inspiration from hummingbirds, butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, bees – and even salamanders.

Created in 1904 by the Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie, Tinker Bell was the fairy companion of Peter Pan, the boy who wanted to never grow up. A tiny, flying creature with mercurial moods, her speech was like a tinkling bell. On stage, she was depicted simply as a darting light.

Today, Tinker Bell is best known through The Walt Disney Company’s depictions, which is where Ari turned for inspiration.

Looking to nature for analogues, he fixed on hummingbirds, which can hover with precision thanks to their rapid and controlled wing beats; dragonflies with their aerial agility; and bees, with their short yet powerful wings for carrying loads. A hybrid wing structure based on all three creatures could be just the thing, he notes.

What about energy intake for this darting, hovering, magical creature?

Like other tiny fliers, Tinker Bell might eat energy-rich foods, such as aphid honeydew or flower nectar, supplemented by tiny insects or pollen grains, according to Ari. She would have a high metabolic rate to sustain her long-range flight and magical feats.

The basal metabolic rate (BMR) is a measure of the energy used when a creature is at rest. Metabolic rates of animals scale predictably with size, with smaller creatures sometimes exhibiting incredibly high metabolic rates relative to their body mass; they’re moving fast and using lots of energy. If Tinker Bell were, say, a mammal weighing 35 grams, her BMR might be around six or seven calories per day – which, gram for gram, is about 20 times that of an African elephant, according to Ari.

Where do the salamanders come in? ‘Cutaneous respiration’, where gas exchange occurs through the skin rather than lungs or gills, is used by salamanders. Insects have tracheal tube-like systems that deliver air right into flight muscles, and hummingbirds have very efficient lungs with parabronchi. A mix of such strategies could be useful for flying fairies.

For those intrigued by blending fantasy with biology, Ari’s article offers a full exploration of fairy physiology. It’s a reminder that science and imagination often go hand in hand, “pushing the frontiers of what we believe is possible”, he says.

Tony got the idea for the assignment after reading a dragon-related spoof scientific paper and seeing how students could apply lessons from BIOSCI 725 and BIOSCI 335 through such an exercise.

“In these courses, they see how animals, including humans, have often solved physiological issues through evolution,” says Tony. “This makes students think about how things work and limits on life. How big is too big to fly? How would Tinker Bell get enough oxygen with human-like lungs?”

Through the fairy project, Tony himself learned that many insects have a separate heart just for their wing circulation (he’s not an entomologist).

And there’s scope for a lot of fun: in a dragon assignment, a student took a depiction of a T-Rex’s food intake in Jurassic Park as indicative for dragons. From this, he came up with ‘lawyer’ as a measure of caloric intake, based on the famous scene where a dinosaur eats a lawyer.

Next year’s assignment? Possibly unicorns.

Paul Panckhurst