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Heh, what can't they do with their tails? :)

Then again I suppose there has to be some compensation for not having their own lower limbs.

Why would a train have a steering wheel? :p

In case you want to derail the train.

Oh, I thought it was a microphone.

It's a steering wheel the doubles as a microphone. And it needs a steering wheel to get around the corners.

Then that must be the way trains work in Oddworld...............

Yeah, because lord knows trains fixed to single track have alot of maneuverability.

As silly as it sounds, this seems like a fluke on OWI's part. They probably had to work in the plot device of the bone falling out of the train cart, and theemudokons discovering it, but the only way to do it would be to have them walking and it falling over them. They probably didn't take into account which direction the machine was going in relation to the cargo. Happens a lot in film.


That, or, knowning Lorne, he may have had some kind of sky side-plot he never finished involving them getting bones from other parts of Mudos. But it was probably just a fluke.

1) I presume you don't mean "fluke".

2) I presume you don't mean "OWF".

Maybe fluke wasn't the right choice in word, and OWF was just a brain fart on my part, sorry. You get the point. I hope.

I'm not sure whether this is what you meant or not, but it always bothered me that the bone would fall out of a train going towards Necrum Mines. Surely the muds should have followed the tracks away from the train?

The bone had probably been caught in the machinery of the train.

That's what I was thinking, seems pretty absurd to bring bones to necrum, so it might have been a bone caught in some mechanism when unloading the bones at bonewerkz and that fell during the train's way back to necrum. This also would explain why the bone fell.

I'd never noticed how fucking stupid that was. Way to disillusion my view of Oddworld, guys.

Makes me wonder if the bone really needed to fall out of the train. Abe and the others would have clearly seen the train going to the huge massive building ahead.

We don't know how much distance was covered between the dropped bone and the mines appearing on the horizon. Presumably it wasn't within sight, or they wouldn't have given up hope entirely at that point. Some spare, misplaced bone falling out of the otherwise unloaded train on its return journey to the mines makes sense, but the Muds couldn't have known it was unloaded. Why didn't they assume it was filled with bones and reason that it was travelling away from the mines? Answer: Muds are stupid.

Well, that settles that.

No it doesn't.

From the proportion of the stairs on the trains "head" I estimate each carriage to be about 15 x 8 metres; about 120 m^2. 120 x 1500 (the bone density of humans and we assume mudokons) = 180,000kg.

F=MA, where M =180,000 and A = 98 (OddWorld gravity)
F= 176,400,000

Industrial engineers must be fucking geniuses if they can construct train wheels that can withstand 176 MegaNewtons of downward force.

That's assuming a perfectly filled cuboid of bones. Given that they're being transported whole, the bones' rigid structure and shape will, to some extent, hold them away from each other and result in a packing density significantly less than 1.

Also, we're yet to have any confirmation that Oddworld gravity is 10x Earth gravity. Also also, even if it is 10x stronger; given that every structure, object and creature is structured similar to Earth equivalents, we must assume that materials are also 10x stronger.

Also also also, since Mudokons are descended from birds their bone density is probably less than that of humans.

Yeah, I've always sucked at maths. All that is way above me.

MoxCo the bone density of mudokons is probably far less than humans because avians have very hollow thin bones. And they evolved from birds so there may be an evolutionary trait there.

It's physics

True, I don't know why I didn't take into consideration the efficiency that the bones are packed.

OddWorld gravity would have to be ten times that of earth or would be breaking the laws of physics - but I don't wan to go there. It is possible that the materials are made of stronger elements than those on earth. The only element I've heard referenced in OddWorld is water but I'm sure there are more.


Bone density can easily change with evolution (ostrich bones are more dense than humans) - the fact that Abe can fall great distances and not become a helpless sack of broken bones would suggest that Mudokons have a relatively high bone density.


EDIT: Damn STM. Just read my reply to ench.

I see you've never miscalculated a jump in AO/AE.