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Show HN: Which animal shares your body fat percentage?
I recently came across a youtube video about animals and their average body fat percentages.I thought it would be fun to compare my body fat to different animals and see which one I most resemble. This idea spiraled into a two-hour project, where I turned the data from the video into a JSON file, asked chatgpt to help create a UI, and deployed the whole thing on netlify. Pretty cool how fast we can quickly build random projects like this 10x faster with llms!
Now that I’m typing this, I still have no clue why I made this... but here it is. Enjoy!
- BigFnTelly 2y agoWhat's the source on the images? are they AI-generated?
- Gasp0de 2y agoThey look AI generated to me.
- amelius 2y agoThere's a crayon in the bottom right corner of each of the images. Perhaps someone recognizes it?
- Aphataeros 2y agoI was wondering the same thing, and checking the images they are hosted on https://craiyon.com/ https://craiyon.com/ Craiyon - Create AI Art with our free AI image generator.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoThis is fun! Take my internet points! Good job.
- grumpwagon 2y agoBetween this today and one square minesweeper yesterday, we're batting 1.000 on funny dumb projects that make me laugh. I don't know why you made this either, but I'm glad you did, thanks!
- fakedang 2y agoHere's another that I discovered today: not a hobby project but a personal webpage that got me rotfl. https://cookie.engineer/ https://cookie.engineer/
- carlgreene 2y agoI am not 10% BF, but was very surprised to see the African Elephant come up for that!
- anon84873628 2y agoI'm skeptical of the source data.
- Gasp0de 2y agoI was completely confused to see that a Walrus has only 2% points more body fat than a Gecko.
- wormlord 2y agoGeckos store fat in their tails https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.UYKInXyy0_Vhs1qqTziRGwAAAA?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.UYKInXyy0_Vhs1qqTziRGwAAAA?rs=...
- shaky-carrousel 2y agoThat's one big fat tail, if I've ever seen one.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jaysonelliot 2y agoIt's very fun! The only change I'd make would be to use real photos of the animals instead of the AI images. It's hard to relate to them the way actual pictures would be. Pexels is an excellent source of free, creative commons images and they have all the animals you need. Here's some geckos https://www.pexels.com/search/gecko/ https://www.pexels.com/search/gecko/ :)
- ramchip 2y agoI had the same thought. AI art looks cheap, but more importantly it doesn't show if the real animal looks fat or not! Pexels looks super useful.
- davio 2y agoCan also prompt AI to create photorealistic images. Midjourney will probably let you specify famous photographer styles.
- lostlogin 2y ago> Can also prompt AI to create photorealistic images It can, but the ‘baby peacock’ thing has damped my enthusiasm. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41767648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41767648
- jaysonelliot 2y agoI find it sadly ironic that using AI to make images of animals directly contributes to the global warming that is driving those same animals extinct.
- pimlottc 2y agoYeah, fun idea, but the AI-generated animal caricature images are a real turn-off for me.
- spuz 2y agoI consider myself slim but so I was pretty amused to see my spirit animal is the pig. Great idea.
- n4r9 2y agoWhat was the source video for the data BTW? I'm a little unsure about some of these, like cows having 5% body fat! According to this[0] webpage a "moderate" condition cow has 19% body fat, but it has a "Body Composition Score" of 5. [0] https://www.grass-fed-solutions.com/body-condition-scoring.html https://www.grass-fed-solutions.com/body-condition-scoring.h...
- tacticalturtle 2y agoAdditionally seals have 40% body fat, but walruses have 20%? That seems suspicious.
- eddd-ddde 2y agoI didn't know my body fat so I just guestimated 20 to immediately be flashbanged by the image of a walrus. I consider myself on the skinny side so it was a surprise to be sure.
- nradov 2y agoThe body fat content for many animal species varies a lot throughout the year based on migration, food availability, and (sometimes) hibernation. So it depends on when you measure.
- ericmcer 2y agocows = 5%, wasps = 15%, kangaroos = 2% I am not an animal expert but just based on intuition this seems off...
- lapcat 2y agoI always suspect that viral online forms like this are simply fronts for collecting personal information to sell.
- School-Cotton 2y agoWho would want to buy the results of a highly unscientific poll about body fat percentages?
- lapcat 2y agoThe highly unscientific poll aspect is irrelevant. The question should be, who would want to know the body fat percentages of potential consumers (as identified by IP addresses, cookies, and other methods of online tracking used by the forms)? This would obviously be useful for targeted advertising, for example. And this information can be correlated and gathered in giant databases with profiles of consumers.
- ajot 2y agoWell, maybe it's just me, but I can see their data being posioned by checking different numbers to see all animals :)
- feoren 2y agoData brokers do not seem to care if their data is poisoned. That's their customers' problem! Their customers don't have any way of validating it, so there's no incentive to care. Haven't you ever received spam that was based on some extremely spurious connections?
- kelipso 2y agoI did that too but the first number I inputted was my percentage. I'd say most people would do the same thing.
- ecshafer 2y agoPeople trying to sell people ozempic and other glp-1 compounds.
- cmiller1 2y agoNote that body fat percentage is notoriously difficult to accurately measure. The linked calculator uses the navy circumference method which gives readings ±3-4 points for most people and even further off for some. It gives me 3.5% which would be insanely low (I'm probably somewhere around 8-10 right now) because I have an unusually wide neck. To get more accurate readings you'd have to pay for a DEXA scan or a bodpod but even those can be off by a couple points.
- anon84873628 2y agoYeah, 3.5% would make you leaner than many Mr. Olympia competitors! And nearly at the point of negative health effects. It's a shame when people use those electronic home scales and believe the results. Someone was so happy to tell me they were at 10% body fat, I could only smile and nod... Most healthy people would have difficulty dropping below 10-12% without very deliberate effort. And beyond that would probably be kinda freaked out when they start to see all the veins and striations appearing.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoI had a DEXA scan done and for me, it showed higher body fat about five percentage points higher than my scale at home did. But I used that as a calibration point for my home scale. I've found as long as I use the home scale under similar conditions each time, mostly in the morning after voiding my bladder but before showering, that there's not much fluctuation from day to day. If I ever hit my goal on the scale, I plan to go back and get a second DEXA scan. Two interesting things that also came from getting the scan done was that it showed that I have poor bone density so that's an issue that needed addressing (and hopefully the second scan will show improvement) and the scan was part of a package where they also did a 3d scan of my body exterior, which I was able to download and 3d print. I plan on making a half-and-half model of my body's change upon hitting my goal body fat percentage.
- foerster 2y agoI got down to about 6% for a bodybuilding show. It was incredible to look at, but also literally painful to bump into any hard surface, to sit on any hard surface, etc. The amount of bony protrusions you have when the body fat is gone is eye opening. I walk around at 10-13% typically, then lean down for summer and shows. Most people at 30+ lbs further away from 'having abs' than they think. I see it time and time again.
- jamil7 2y agoErr hornet.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- rayxi271828 2y agoMen and women will have very different body fat percentage level for similar look. In general it's something like women's = men's +8-9%?
- willcipriano 2y agoA man is considered lean around 15%, a woman is lean around 20%. Men: https://images.app.goo.gl/Gn5pBBN2FB22YGsz7 https://images.app.goo.gl/Gn5pBBN2FB22YGsz7 Women: https://images.app.goo.gl/wAP5VDfCzKiWWYwG9 https://images.app.goo.gl/wAP5VDfCzKiWWYwG9
- moralestapia 2y agoCat master race reporting in. Great site, thanks for sharing!
- topherjaynes 2y agoWhoa, I was shocked that an elephant was sub 10% body fat...now to call some one an elephant and explain it's a compliment!
- BlindEyeHalo 2y agoHaving insects in there feels a bit odd to me. Not exactly relatable.
- parpfish 2y agoid rather see a table than have to enter a form. that way you don't just get "your" score, but you get to see the whole list of animals and learn about which ones have high/low body fat
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bogtog 2y agoI clicked through all the ones from 1% (crab) to 25% (sheep). I honestly can't see any pattern here
- sebmellen 2y agoThe cutworm moth is 72% body fat. Crazy!!!!
- p4bl0 2y agoHéhéhé. That is fun!
- ProjectArcturis 2y agoSource data is very wrong. A walrus is not 20% body fat.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y agoAll of it? How fat is a walrus, where's _your_ source? It probably varies by subspecies, age, season, etc. Maybe they are ripped af under all that blubber? OP's source is a YouTube video that doesn't list their source. Given that video is post ChatGPT...
- erikerikson 2y agoThis reminds me of the information stealing spam we'd see on Facebook. At least, unlike many of the questions in those, I haven't seen BMI used as a security question.
- nonameiguess 2y agoI can understand the excitement in principle that you made an app with little effort, but there is no reason this can't be a static page with a table of animals and their average body fat percentages. Users don't need to enter any information and you don't even need a backend. They can simply go the page and find the animal from the table that most closely matches their own bodyfat percentage. The data is also dubious. I'm not going to enter every possible number to see what comes back, but the number reported here for cows is definitely wrong. Insects have cells that can store nutrients, but not adipose tissue in the familiar mammal sense that we have. There is no way to know how much fat they're actually storing at any given moment versus other nutrients.
- timeon 2y agoUsers could still enter the information. But instead of input form it would be browsers 'find in page' search bar.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoHow long did it take you to make?
- Atallapr 2y ago2 hours!
- abraxas 2y ago"Your closest match is a lion".... alright, I'll continue drinking coffee and staring at the screen all day then.
- christiangenco 2y agoThis is neat! I have a few thoughts: - my intuitive sense of animals that are thin or fat is totally off. I think of cows as being fat (ex: "fat cow") but their body fat percentage is only 6%! I think of Gorillas being super fit and muscular but they're at 31%! - I hate that I can't hit enter after changing the body fat percentage value and have it change - on that note I'd prefer if there wasn't a "find my match" button at all—after changing the body fat percentage value the match should immediately update - better than that would be a sliding scale of every animal and the one that matches gets highlighted and centered - real-world pictures would be better and even better than that would be an image of the animal and a cross section/MRI of the animal where you can see the fat distribution
- zamadatix 2y agoI think it'd be cool if the input was to calculate the % (if you didn't already know) and the area below was just a timeline-like output with the different animals marked along the way. It seems most people here are more interested in exploring the output space than finding their specific animal match.
- 6510 2y agoIt needs to push state the bmi to the url so that I can send it to people. It could also be fun if one could fill out the age, weight, height and gender to calculate the bmi. Now that I think about it it would be hilarious to use sliders and have a cartoon person populated with the data generated in real time.
- Atallapr 2y agoI am seeing a lot of cool feature ideas on this thread which is amazing! I just made the repo public if anyone wants to look at the json or put in a PR with some edits :) https://github.com/amittallapragada/animal-bodyfat-calculator/tree/main https://github.com/amittallapragada/animal-bodyfat-calculato...
- nzealand 2y agoThe average body fat of a New Zealand male is 14–25% according to Google's AI. The average body fat of a Kiwi woman is 25-31% according to ChatGPT. The closest match is the sheep.