this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not necessarily, many small animals have an utterly insane metabolism making them eat their entire body mass in a couple of days. For example, hummingbirds eat the human equivalent of 150,000 calories per day.

Larger animals typically cannot afford to spend so much energy - there is just no large food source that has sufficient calory density.

[โ€“] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Good point! I'd love to see a by-genus breakdown of average metabolic rate vs body mass.