A model for the age-dependent dynamics of growth of overland mammals

Two hypothetical biological mechanisms were proposed that largely determine the dynamics of growth of overland mammals. The first mechanism is the maintenance of a spatial similarity of the anatomy of the organism during its growth, and the second is the maintenance of the stability of the internal environment of the organism. On the basis of the advanced hypothesis, a model of age-dependent dynamics of growth was constructed, and a differential equation describing the changes in the body mass with time was derived. According to this model, the dynamics of growth and the mass of an adult individual are determined by two energy constants that characterize the mechanism of food assimilation and the energy expenditures for the movement of the individual in space. The deviation between the solution obtained and the experimental data on age-dependent changes in the mass of the human body was on the average 6%. These insignificant deviations were explained in the framework of the proposed hypothesis, which indicates its validity.