Brooks's Law

Biological Parallel

Social species universally hit group-size limits driven by coordination overhead. Wolf packs plateau at 10-15 members. Chimpanzee communities fission above 120-150 (Dunbar's number). Dolphin pods split along social bonds when they grow too large. Ant colonies bypass the limit by replacing individual communication with chemical broadcast signaling. Honeybee colonies scale through modular, decentralized task allocation. The organisms that scale beyond pairwise coordination limits do so by changing the communication architecture, not by adding members.