Animal Scaling-Why Is Size So Important

by Mackenzie Hartman

Submitted : Spring 2012

The project focused on animal scaling. I looked at the various reasons as to why animal growth is restricted. I found a number of factors restrict growth including an animal’s surface area to volume ratio, nutrition needs, metabolic rate, body temperature, heartbeat, and bone strength. Because there is such broad range of topics involving animal scaling, I decided to focus on energy consumption. Using Kleiber’s law I found that the average Asian elephant only needs 219.96 times the energy that the average household cat does. This is amazing considering Asian elephants on average weight roughly 1,327 times more than the average household cat. This means that cats need much more energy per unit body mass than elephants do.

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