Pretty much everyone is vulnerable to the penguin problem (at least that’s our excuse). So this is what we’re terming the ‘penguin problem’ – a widely shared lack of good instincts regarding the big numbers about nature. That’s because we all have a grasp of the size of kitchens, but no comparable feel for the more global, abstract parameters of life on earth. Someone would definitely have noticed that glaring mistake. The truth is our instincts for big numbers are like most people’s – not too good, especially when the numbers relate to things outside our day-to-day experience, like the size of penguin populations in the Antarctic.įor the sake of comparison, suppose we’d claimed that the average kitchen fridge was a kilometre high (an error of a similar magnitude). But how did this particular one go undetected? Probably in part because we and our editors found the 410 million figure to be reasonably plausible – despite being off by a factor of about 750!

Mistakes can happen during the production of a book drawing on over a thousand data points.

(The size of the penguin in the illustrations was calculated based on the correct numbers, so does not need to be revised for future editions.)

The mega Emperor penguin is a recurring character, so the faulty number also appears in captions on pages 64 and 90. This was due to an error in copy-and-pasting from our working spreadsheet into the text of the book. Around 98 metres tall, the mega Emperor penguin is smooshed from an Emperor penguin population estimated at between 531,000 and 557,000, according to the British Antarctic Survey.īut in the middle of the long caption on page 31, we wrongly listed its population as 410 million.

Penguin problems