Species and gestation

The platform’s species catalog is one anonymous GET under animal-taxonomy/v1/. It uses the standard envelope (data, resultCode) and is cached, so the same request returns the same data until the catalog changes. Store id or sysName (DOG, CANARY) and display name (Localized names).

List species

GET animal-taxonomy/v1/species?locale=en-US returns every active species in the platform’s display order (dog, cat, horse, then by popularity). schemaVersion is 1.4.

Field	What it holds
id, code, sysName	Stable identifiers. Key your records on sysName.
scientificName, name, summary	Latin name, localized display name and tagline.
slug, heroMediaId	The published species page, when there is one.
displayOrder	The catalog sort key.
iconSvg	A small square icon for the species: a self-contained SVG document (48 x 48, no external references), drawn to read at 24 px beside the name. Show it as an image, for example <img src="data:image/svg+xml,..."> with the markup percent-encoded. Do not insert it into your page as HTML. null when the species has none.
gestationKind	What the days below count: GESTATION (mating to birth) or INCUBATION (egg-laying or spawning to hatch). null when not stated.
gestationDaysReference	The typical length in days, from the veterinary literature.
gestationDaysReferenceMin, gestationDaysReferenceMax	The usual range around it.
gestationDaysObserved	The mean measured from breeding records on the platform; null until there are any.
gestationObservedSampleCount	How many records gestationDaysObserved is based on. Prefer it over the reference only from 30 up.

GET animal-taxonomy/v1/species/{slug}?locale= (schemaVersion 1.1) carries the same gestation fields next to the species page content.

{
  "sysName": "DOG",
  "name": "Dog",
  "gestationKind": "GESTATION",
  "gestationDaysReference": 63,
  "gestationDaysReferenceMin": 58,
  "gestationDaysReferenceMax": 68,
  "gestationDaysObserved": null,
  "gestationObservedSampleCount": 0
}

Working out a due date

Add gestationDaysReference to the mating date only when gestationKind is GESTATION. For an INCUBATION species (birds, reptiles, egg-laying fish) the days run from the day the eggs were laid, which comes days or weeks after mating, so mating date + days is not a hatch date. Use the min and max to show a window rather than a single day: a birth a few days either side of the reference is normal.

The platform does exactly this for breeders: an expected litter’s owner is reminded a week before the earliest mating + the species’ gestation days.