👪 Animals: for parents and teachers

What this is

105 animals so far, each drawn from the side and scaled to its measured size, so two animals on the compare stage stand at their true relative size beside a drawn child. Each animal has its own page at three reading levels (Little, Middle and Big, chosen from your child’s grade or picked by hand), and 357 pairs have their own pages. Everything is read aloud.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure is shown with a small number that links to its source and the day it was checked. We look in this order: Wikidata (CC0, used only where its statement carries a reference), then US government pages (the National Park Service, NOAA Fisheries, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the Geological Survey and the Federal Register), and only then the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Every figure was read off its page, word for word, and checked by script against the live page before it went in.

Where no page we trust gives a number, even for a famous animal, the page says “no checked number yet” rather than guess. Today that is true of the size of the honey bee, the three-toed sloth and a few others.

The numbers are also a free data file: animals.csv and animals.json, free to reuse with a link back.

What we leave out, on purpose

Children ask “who would win?”. We answer only the fair, kid-safe part: a race by top speed over a short dash, with a note when one animal is swimming and the other running. We never show a fight, an animal being hurt or eaten, blood, or mating. Diets are a list of foods, never a description of a hunt. Conservation status is three gentle words (“Doing fine”, “Needs help”, “In danger”) with the real category beside it for older readers, and the only thing we ask of a child is to learn and tell. There are no photos, no videos, no ads and no comments.

In a classroom

• Print fact cards: two per Letter or A4 sheet, by habitat, by kind, or the whole set.
• Compare Two on a projector: children pick the habitat, kind and animal; the stage, the five rows and the race make a quick estimation lesson (“how many cheetahs long is a crocodile?”).
• The source marks are a ready lesson in citing a fact: open one, find the number on its page, and check our work.
• The Report Builder: pick any animal and a grade band (1–2, 3–4, 5–6) and print one page with its numbers, sources and a reading passage filled in and lines for the child’s own words, or print a class set, one animal per child.
• Short guides: drawing to scale, top speeds, sources, and animal kinds.

Privacy

Nothing on these pages is typed by a child or sent anywhere. The device remembers a few small things: the reading level, miles or kilometers, the last pair compared, which animals your child has marked “met”, the size game’s best streak, and, if your child sets it with the + and − buttons under a size picture, their height, so the picture can stand them beside the animals. Bingo cards are made on the device too.