Tangential trip down memory lane: I was 13 when that film came out, and this poster was one of the most awesomely cool things I had ever seen.
Imagine my disappointment when the actual scene looked nothing like it.
Actually, jumping ability doesn’t scale. A flea, a frog, a human, and a horse can all jump about the same height or distance-- How far an animal can jump depends only on how specialized it is for jumping, not on its size.
A large frog can jump farther than a small frog.
These two articles seem to indicate zoo experts expect shorter leaping distances from gorillas then they do humans. The 13 and 15 foot moats were thought to be enough, though they proved not to be
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/monkeywire/2004-June/000626.html
Hope that provides some numbers to work with.
As to the towers being able to take the impact I’d guess no. The towers design was different then most sky scrapers. The buildings where design with the outside walls being the main support so I’d expect the WTC would be less able to support an impact directly to the top then other buildings that used the traditional boxlike support systems.
Not if they both have the same proportion of body mass in their jumping muscles. If in fact large frogs can jump further, that probably just indicates that they’re proportioned differently.
Well, technically they *did *withstand the plane impact itself, the buildings stood there with the gaping holes for a while before finally collapsing. It was the burning jet fuel that weakened the supports. I wonder if there wasn’t all that fuel & fires if they could have survived & been repaired or if the weight of the top floors would have eventually been too much?