Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

For instance, most heating, cooling, and lighting is proportional to the corresponding surface areas of the heaters, air conditioners, and windows. Their effectiveness therefore increases much more slowly than the volume of living space needed to be heated, cooled, or lit, so these need to be disproportionately increased in size when a building is scaled up. Similarly, for large animals, the need to dissipate heat generated by their metabolism and physical activity can become problematic because the surface area through which it is dissipated is proportionately much smaller relative to their volume than for smaller ones. Elephants, for example, have solved this challenge by evolving disproportionately large ears to significantly increase their surface area so as to dissipate more heat.