AnimalvsAnimal
Size

Who’s bigger?

Everything drawn to the same scale, three ways — by height, by weight, and by how many of one fit inside the other.

In the line-up

77 animals have a height and a drawing, so they can stand on the floor.

6 picked · up to 12
🦒Giraffe🐘Elephant🧍Human🦁Lion🐅Tiger🦡Honey badger

Everything standing on the same floor

Grid at 1 m · each drawing is scaled to its real height

Giraffe
5.28 m
full standing height
Elephant
2.80 m
at the shoulder
Human
1.70 m
full standing height
Lion
1.15 m
at the shoulder
Tiger
0.91 m
at the shoulder
Honey badger
0.26 m
at the shoulder

Silhouettes: PhyloPic — Bernard Dupont (photograph) and T. Michael Keesey (tracing) (CC BY-SA), Lukasiniho (CC BY-NC-SA), Gabriela Palomo-Munoz (CC BY-NC); others CC0.

Some heights are to the shoulder and some to the top of the head — each label says which.

Some of these were measured standing and some lying down, which differ by 10–20 cm. The dot beside each one shows which.

▸Sources for these heights
  • Giraffe5.28 m(4.85 m–5.70 m, sexes)Method not statedFull standing height, to the crown

    derived

    male: 5.70 m — Animal Diversity Web, Giraffa camelopardalis account, https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Giraffa_camelopardalis/

    female: 4.85 m — Animal Diversity Web, Giraffa camelopardalis account, https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Giraffa_camelopardalis/

  • Elephant2.80 m(2.40 m–3.20 m, sexes)Method not statedHeight at the shoulder (withers)

    derived

    male: 3.20 m — Nowak, Walker's Mammals of the World (1999)

    female: 2.40 m — Laursen & Bekoff 1978, Mammalian Species 92, p.1

  • Human1.70 m(1.60 m–1.85 m, typical)Method not statedFull standing height, to the crown

    NCD Risk Factor Collaboration 2016, eLife 5:e13410 (global mean adult stature)

  • Lion1.15 m(1.07 m–1.23 m, sexes)Method not statedHeight at the shoulder (withers)

    derived

    male: 1.23 m — Haas, Hayssen & Krausman 2005, Mammalian Species 762, p.2

    female: 1.07 m — Haas, Hayssen & Krausman 2005, Mammalian Species 762, p.2

  • Tiger0.91 m(0.86 m–0.96 m, typical)Standing, liveHeight at the shoulder (withers)

    Pocock 1939, Fauna of British India, Mammalia I, p.206

    Also published: 0.95 m (Measured lying down) — Hunter 2011, Carnivores of the World, Plate 14. Higher by 0.04 m.

    male: 0.99 m — Dunbar Brander 1923, Wild Animals in Central India, p.54

  • Honey badger0.26 m(0.23 m–0.28 m, typical)Method not statedHeight at the shoulder (withers)

    Rosevear 1974, The Carnivores of West Africa, p.113

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