📘 Animal guides

Short guides to read with me, or to hear. Each one answers a question children ask about animals, and links to the animals it talks about.

Size, speed and numbers

📏 How big is that, really? How Peabody draws animals to their true size, why a bee next to a whale needs a magnifier, and how to measure yourself against the child on the stage.
🐋 The biggest animal that ever lived Was the biggest animal ever a dinosaur or a whale? The blue whale is the heaviest known, but a long-necked dinosaur may have been longer. Sizes sourced.
🏃 How fast is fast? Animal top speeds compared, why a top speed is not an all-day speed, and why running, swimming, flying and diving are different races.
⏳ How long do animals live? Animal lifespans for kids, from short insect lives to elephants, whales and tortoises, why wild and zoo lives differ, and why pets live longer with care.
🔎 Where do the numbers come from? Where Peabody's animal numbers come from (Wikidata, the Park Service, NOAA, the Smithsonian), what 'checked' means, and why two sites disagree.

🦈 Is a shark a fish? Is a whale? Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and animals without a backbone, explained for kids: why a shark is a fish, a whale is a mammal and a penguin is a bird.
🌍 Habitats, in one page each The eight animal habitats on Peabody explained for kids: what makes a savanna, rainforest, ocean, desert, snowy place, forest, pond or backyard what it is.
🏡 Who lives in your backyard? Backyard animals to look for, from robins and squirrels to fireflies and bats, and how to watch wild animals without touching them.
🐼 What does "endangered" mean? What endangered means in kid words, who decides which animals are in danger, and how Peabody's gentle words match the real Red List names.

🐔 Are birds dinosaurs? Yes, birds are dinosaurs. See what feathers, hollow bones, wishbones and nests birds share with Velociraptor, and why Pteranodon was not a dinosaur.
🗣️ How to say a dinosaur's name Say Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Parasaurolophus with confidence: cut the name into chunks, find the loud part, and learn the Greek bits that repeat.
🦴 Fossils: how we know No one ever saw a living dinosaur, so how do we know? Fossils for kids: bones, footprints and eggs turned to stone, how they are dug out, and what they tell us.

📝 Writing an animal report A step-by-step animal report for kids: the facts to collect, the sentence to start with, how to say where a fact came from, and a fact card to print.
🏁 Why we race and never fight Kids ask who would win between two animals. Peabody answers with a short race by top speed, and explains what it leaves out and why animals avoid each other.