Seen in the wild: infographic from National Geographic

An analysis of a lovely infographic from the July, 2011 issue of National Geographic (not my work). The subject is the average daily time spent sleeping by a variety of animals:

Click for larger image.

Reasons to like it:

• Shows both % of the day spent sleeping, as well as exact hours.
• Adds iris/pupil patterns of the various eyes.
• Evokes the concept of sleep with the “eyelid” sleep indicator.
• Includes our species for context.
• Provides information about the subjects used (all adults, all except humans in captivity).
• Sorts from least to most to increase ease of comprehension. Of course, the issue here is not whether it’s done in descending or ascending order, just that order makes it more intuitive.

The only change I might make would be to combine the lines of text at the top and bottom, but this may be driven by a style standard. In any case, it’s a small issue, and doesn’t hurt the clarity of the graphic.