Energy investment into maturation encompasses any expenses linked to tissue differentiation, i.e. re-organization of body structure during development. This is different from growth which can be conceptualized as synthesis of more of the same. Energy invested into growth is fixed into the biomass of the organism (with some overheads), but energy invested in maturation is oxidized as metabolic work making it more difficult to quantify in practice. Nonetheless it can be quantified and it can even represent a substantial part of the energy budget of living organisms. In this talk I will give an overview of different studies where investment in maturity was quantified. The focus will be on 4 different types of organisms: cnidarians, ctenophores, teleost fish and frogs. I will further discuss what type of eco-physiological effects might be expected when an organism modifies its investment into these processes. Some intriguing literature studies will be presented which can be re-interpreted in perhaps unexpected ways when investment into maturation is taken into account. This raises the question of just how important and how flexible such costs might actually be. Maturity can be used as a quantifier for internal time. Seven criteria were proposed which should be respected by any such metric: (1) independent of morphology, (2) independent of body size, (3) depend on one a priori homologous event, (4) unaffected by changes in temperature, (5) similar between closely related species, (6) increase with clock time, and (7) physically quantifiable (Reiss 1989). We showed that the maturity concept of Dynamic Energy Budget theory complies with all those criteria and on the basis of this information and the studies presented above I will finish by discussing the potential role of maturity in shaping metabolic flexibility.[-]