Humans are often obsessed with their weight, but nature seems to know exactly how fat each animal on the planet should be. The perfect weight depends on how each species solves the problem of avoiding both starving to death and being killed by predators, new research suggests.
The study, published in The American Naturalist, explains how these causes of death often exert opposite pressures on animals. Storing a lot of fat, for example, helps animals survive periods without food but also slows their running speeds and so makes getting caught by a predator more likely.
Animals can be stronger to compensate, but the energetic costs of extra muscle mean that the animal would starve more quickly during a food shortage.
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