As it turns out, the emergence and popularization of Zoos during the Victorian era was largely driven by the work conducted at the Royal Institute for Volumetric Measurements in London.

Similarly the expansion of the British empire was mostly driven by the need to find ever larger exotic animals in order to establish comparative volumetric weights for the ever larger ships and constructions of that era.

"25.678 standard volume foxes", was starting to become a bit unwieldy when describing a cargo vessel's size.

Nah, there's a list somewhere of typical weights, dimensions, volumes, etc. of common items. They just put in their value and it pops up. They're nerds first, and scientists second. You KNOW this exists somewhere, and they all have it bookmarked.