Living at the Physiological Limits: Field and Maximum Metabolic Rates of the Common Shrew

This research documented the extreme metabolic demands of shrews - the highest mass-specific field metabolic rate in mammals. Shrews must eat 150-200% of their body weight daily and can starve in 2-5 hours without food.

For business, shrews illustrate the dangerous end of high metabolism: there's no margin for error when you're always two hours from starvation. The shrew demonstrates why some degree of 'waste' (reserves, slack) is actually essential resilience - pure efficiency without buffer is lethal.