According to a famous article by max kleiber*, the scaling of the metabolic rate or energy consumption for mammals pmetab (measured in kcal/day) with the body mass mb (measured in kilograms) is p metab = 70 mb 0.75 . what is the scaling exponent (the quantity x in a scaling law a = cmbx) for the specific metabolic rate as a function of the animal’s body mass? which uses more energy per unit body mass, a small animal or a large animal? the frequency of respiration (breaths per minute) for mammals obeys the same type of scaling equation as does the specific metabolic rate (i. e. the exponent x is the same, but the constant c is obviously different). what is the ratio of the frequency of respiration of the mouse to that of the cow?