For the Sake of Arguement

[HappyCanuck]

The way I see it she's a god, her powers work the way she wants them to work, in other words: "it's magic, we don't have to explain it." However, it could be she has a connection to the dimension of the Northern Gods and is borrowing energy from there to increase her mass and shunting energy into it to reduce her mass.

Actually, Legerd, that is the best explanation I've heard, and one I can subscribe to to ease my logical mind. Unlike most people, I have extreme difficulties with suspension of disbelief - to a point where I need to understand how an ability works in the realm of natural physics (magic I put aside, since it's supposed to be unexplainable).

[Le Messor]

Which actually gets to me about OHOTMU. They consistently say 'they're magic, so their powers don't need to be explained... they grow using mass from a possibly extra-dimensional source'...

Are mossies (we Aussies use that term, too! Aussie mossies.) a hive culture? I don't think so... but two points about a swarm / hive species:

1) It was said she became a swarm of mosquitos. It was never said she became an ordinary swarm. I just got that she broke her body down into swarming components, rather than turning into multiple individual animals.

b> Hives are generally run by one mind: a queen. Kinda appropriate, n'est-ce-pas? (This doesn't add to the argument, I just think it's a bit cool, and I only just thought of it.)

Was the hare ordinary-sized? Hmm... from memory, I think she was large, but a lot smaller than Birdie's human form. No help there.

- Le Messor
"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."
- Noel Coward

[Legerd]

Was the hare ordinary-sized? Hmm... from memory, I think she was large, but a lot smaller than Birdie's human form.

I looked it up and she was a regular-sized hare.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Yup...and she was a regularly-sized mouse, recently...Obviously, the Handbook description isn't as iron-clad canon as some fans believe. This is still fiction, we're talking about here...And all fiction is at the whim of those who write it...Handbooks are just guides, they don't need to be followed to the letter.

Dana

[-K-M-]

It wasn't just said in the handbooks, but I digress. I even stated how the recent First Class issue was incorrect in that sense; but, I even said it wasn't a big deal.

[kozzi24]

When the Wasp shrinks, she retains her mass and gains super-strength in relation to her size. (One of the older handbooks had her bending a steel bar from the Stern era of Avengers.
Snowbird probably also compacts strngth and mass. The hare and the mouse were probably super-strong rodents.
She probably COULD shrink down to a single mosquito...but where's the tactical advantage in combat?
My understanding is that she could take on the form of any arctic-native animal, and if in the form too long, could lose her sentience. She does not necessarily take on all the animal's natural attributes. While mosquiroes are not hive-minded, the Snowbird-swarm probably was, by the strictest definition of hive-mind.

[Le Messor]

She probably COULD shrink down to a single mosquito...but where's the tactical advantage in combat?

She hasn't used the mosquitoes for combat; only to get into tight spaces.
Which goes back to the mass / size argument; if she could change to a single animal of small size, technically she wouldn't ever have needed to break up with herself.

- Le Messor
"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall."