Species dataset

Animal pages state measurements the way a reader expects them — “46 pounds”, “3.5 feet”, “10 to 12 years”. Those strings are readable but not comparable, so this dataset parses each one into a single unit system: kilograms, centimetres, kilometres per hour, and years.

Each row carries both values: the normalized number and the original text it came from. That means any conversion here can be checked against the source wording, and against the references listed on the species page itself.

Coverage is not the same for every field, and the gaps are deliberate. Where a source value is descriptive rather than numeric — “slow swimmer”, “agile climber rather than a fast runner”, “not well documented in the wild” — the numeric cell is left empty instead of being filled with an invented figure.

Top speed is the sparse one on purpose: for most species the honest answer is a description of how the animal moves, not a tested maximum. Only the 77 species with a published figure carry a number here.

This is a compilation, not original field measurement. Values are drawn from the references listed on each species page — IUCN assessments, Animal Diversity Web, museum and government wildlife sources — so the dataset inherits their uncertainty.

• Ranges are typical adult figures, not absolute records, and many species show large regional or sex-based variation that a single min–max pair flattens.
• “Max mass” is the upper end of the published adult range, so comparisons between a well-studied species and a poorly studied one are not like-for-like.
• Top speeds come from varied methods — GPS, radar, chase footage, estimates — and are not directly comparable between species.
• One species per page: subspecies are not broken out, and a page may describe the most widespread member of a genus.

If you need measurement-grade precision, treat this as an index into the primary sources rather than as the authority.

The dataset is published under CC BY 4.0: reuse it, including commercially, as long as you credit the source. Photographs on the site are licensed separately by their individual creators — see Sources & Methodology.

Wildlife Encyclopedia. “Wildlife Encyclopedia species dataset” v1.0, 178 species. https://www.wildlifedb.com/dataset

Found a value that looks wrong? That is useful — send the species and the field through the contact page and the correction flows into the next export.