Drugs, like metabolites and oxygen, are typically transported across surface membranes, sometimes via diffusion and sometimes through network systems. As a result, the dose-determining factor is to a significant degree constrained by the scaling of surface areas rather than the total volume or weight of an organism, and these scale nonlinearly with weight. A simple calculation using the ⅔ scaling rule for areas as a function of weight shows that a more appropriate dose for elephants should be closer to a few milligrams of LSD rather than the several hundred that were actually administered.
