Data from necropsy studies and <Emphasis Type="Italic">in vitro</Emphasis> tissue studies lead to a model for allometric scaling of basal metabolic rate

Background  

The basal metabolic rate (BMR) of a mammal of mass M is commonly described by the power function αM ^β where α and β are constants determined by linear regression of the logarithm of BMR on the logarithm of M (i. e., β is the slope and α is the intercept in regression analysis). Since Kleiber's demonstration that, for 13 measurements of BMR, the logarithm of BMR is closely approximated by a straight line with slope 0.75, it has often been assumed that the value of β is exactly 3/4 (Kleiber's law).