On being the right size

During my undergrad in biology, we were assigned to read biologist J. B. S. Haldane 's essay " On Being the Right Size ", collected in his 1927 book Possible Worlds and Other Essays . The essay centers on the inextricable link between an organism's size and its form; for example, the mechanics of a rabbit would not work at the scale of a hippopotamus, nor would the mechanics of a whale work at the…