Scaling of home range size: Body size, metabolic needs and ecology

It is hardly surprising that elephants range over larger areas than rabbits. We expect larger animals to need to cover more ground to obtain their food. Equally, we expect herbivores to require less area over which to forage than carnivores of the same size. It might be thought that home range areas, or the sizes of feeding territories, would vary with body size and ecology in a straightforward manner. In fact we still do not know the precise reasons why animals have the home range sizes that they do.