You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building; a man is killed, a horse splashes.

— J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927)

From the essay 'On Being the Right Size' in Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927).

Topics: biology