# Variable: KG_PER_TISSUE_UNIT

[**lifecycle-kit**](https://jonbogaty.com/lifecycle-kit/api/readme/index.md)

***

[lifecycle-kit](https://jonbogaty.com/lifecycle-kit/api/readme/index.md) / [chem](https://jonbogaty.com/lifecycle-kit/api/chem/readme/index.md) / KG\_PER\_TISSUE\_UNIT


# Variable: KG\_PER\_TISSUE\_UNIT {#variable-kg_per_tissue_unit}


> `const` **KG\_PER\_TISSUE\_UNIT**: `0.05` = `0.05`

Defined in: [chem/metabolism.ts:246](https://github.com/jbcom/lifecycle-kit/blob/074e4e7b8038d3e2de9eb44c4b5b5aee0ef02b48/src/chem/metabolism.ts#L246)

Tissue units per kilogram.

bodyMass() counts tissue units, which are arbitrary — a newborn is 3 and a
grown pet is a few dozen. The peer-reviewed scaling laws in src/bio-laws
are all calibrated in KILOGRAMS, and feeding them raw tissue units would
produce numbers that typecheck and mean nothing: Damuth's law on a "mass"
of 8 would report the population density of an eight-kilogram animal.

So the conversion is explicit and lives here, next to the thing it
converts. One unit is 50 g, which puts a newborn at 150 g and a well-grown
creature in the low kilograms — the range of a small mammal, which is what
this creature reads as.