The Carnivore’s Dilemma

By Lisa Agustin

Showing large numbers in a way that both grabs the attention of an audience and also compels them to think about their relationship to the data can be a challenge for statistics-based visualizations. Animal Visuals has just released an animation depicting the rate of slaughter of chickens, pigs, and cows in the United States in 2008:

Initially, I found the speed of the animation to be somewhat distracting, but the effect of the animals moving/twitching along the conveyor belt gave me a visceral feeling that was hard to ignore. In a way I wonder if this was really the point of the graphic, rather than making me think about the numbers themselves.