Number of Chromosomes by Species

About This Dataset

The number of chromosomes (the diploid count, 2n) carried by different animals. The figure has nothing to do with an organism's size or complexity: a goldfish has more than twice as many chromosomes as a human, while a fruit fly has only eight.

✨ AI Insight

This chart dismantles the intuition that more complex animals have more chromosomes. The goldfish (100) leads the list with well over double the human count (46), a legacy of an ancient whole-genome duplication in its ancestry. Dogs and chickens (both 78) also exceed humans, as does the horse (64), while the cat (38) sits below us. At the low extreme, the fruit fly manages with just 8 chromosomes and the yellow-fever mosquito only 6 - and the jack jumper ant reaches the theoretical minimum of 2 in females (males have a single chromosome). The 50-fold spread, with no relationship to body size or intelligence, shows that chromosome number reflects an organism's genome-packaging history, not its place on any ladder of complexity.

Source: Wikipedia - List of Organisms by Chromosome Count

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Goldfish leads with 100 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 47 · median: 46.

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Gap in All Time: Goldfish is 50× larger than Jack jumper ant (female).