Animals you wouldn’t want to stand beside

A great white shark, a saltwater crocodile, an elephant and a giraffe, all beside the same 1.75-metre person.

The person in these pictures has been given a terrible itinerary.

First they are placed beside a great white shark. Then a saltwater crocodile. After that comes an elephant whose shoulder is well above their head, followed by a giraffe that requires considerably more looking up.

Fortunately, nobody is actually being asked to do this. The human figure is useful because it stays the same size while everything around it changes.

Each animal is a chosen example rather than a record specimen. The point is not to find the largest animal ever measured. It is to make familiar animals occupy believable space again. [1]–[4]

The shark keeps going long after the person stops

The great white in this comparison is 4.5 metres long. The person is 1.75 metres tall. Measured that way, the shark is about 2.6 times as long as the person is high. [1]

Two of those human heights laid end to end would make 3.5 metres. The shark would carry on for another full metre. A third person would finally make the line longer than the fish.

A fin breaking the surface shows you only a fragment. The full outline is what changes the picture: nose, body and tail all have to fit somewhere.

This is a size comparison, not a risk comparison. It tells you how much space the animal occupies, not how it will behave.

The crocodile uses the same length very differently

The saltwater crocodile in this set is also 4.5 metres long. Its selected mass is 500 kilograms. [2]

On a spreadsheet, giving the shark and crocodile the same length makes them look oddly similar. Side by side with a person, they do not feel similar at all.

The crocodile carries its size low and long. A human can stand taller than much of its back while the animal still extends several metres from snout to tail.

Height is the measurement we instinctively reach for when we compare ourselves with something. The crocodile is a good reminder that it is not always the useful one.

An elephant’s shoulder is nearly twice human height

The African bush elephant below is an adult male modelled at 3.3 metres at the shoulder. Beside the same 1.75-metre person, its shoulder is almost 1.9 times as high. [3]

That leaves 1.55 metres between the top of the person's head and the elephant's shoulder line.

Not its raised trunk. Not the highest point the animal could possibly reach. Its shoulder.

Now switch the comparison to Mass. The elephant's selected 5,000 kilograms is about 71 times the human example's 70 kilograms. [3]

The height ratio was less than two to one. The mass ratio is more than seventy to one.

That difference is a useful warning against treating one dimension as shorthand for the whole animal. The elephant is not merely a taller person-shaped object. Its bulk changes the comparison completely.

The giraffe simply keeps going upwards

The giraffe reaches five metres in the final comparison, around 2.9 times the person's height. Three human heights would make 5.25 metres, just enough to overtake it. [4]

With the elephant, the striking thing is bulk. With the giraffe, your eye keeps travelling upwards through legs, body and neck.

That is why the same human figure is useful four times over. The reference does not move. The shark stretches away from it, the crocodile hugs the ground, the elephant fills the space around it and the giraffe leaves it far below.

All four animals were familiar before the comparison started. Familiarity, it turns out, is not the same thing as having a good sense of scale.