🔎 Where do the numbers come from?

The places we look, in order

First, Wikidata: a free database anyone can use, which often says where its own numbers came from. We only use a Wikidata number when it carries a reference.

Next, pages from the United States government, which belong to everyone: the National Park Service (park rangers write about the animals in their parks), NOAA Fisheries (whales, sharks, turtles and fish), the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the Geological Survey.

Last, when none of those has the number, the Smithsonian's National Zoo, which cares for many of these animals. We use its number, link to its page, and write everything in our own words.

Who gave which numbers

This table counts how many numbers on Peabody came from each place.

What "checked" means

"Checked" is the day a person or a helper opened the page and read the number off it, word for word. A computer then opened the same page again and made sure the words were really there. If a page changes later, the number might be out of date, which is why the date is shown.

Why two sites disagree

Animals are not all the same size. Some pages give the biggest one ever measured; others give a typical grown-up. Some measure a lizard with its tail and some without. Some give a male's weight, and males and females can be very different.

So when you see one site say one number and another site say something else, both might be right about different things. We show one number with its note ("males", "the most measured", "in the wild") and its page, so you can see exactly what it is.

When we can't find a number

Sometimes no page we trust gives a number, even for a famous animal. Then the page says "no checked number yet" instead of guessing. We'd rather show a gap than a number nobody can stand behind.