title: Easiest way to create a NumPy record array from a list of dictionaries?
body: <p>Say I have data like <code>d = [dict(animal='cat', weight=5), dict(animal='dog', weight=20)]</code> (basically JSON, where all entries have consistent data types).</p>
  
  <p>In Pandas you can make this a table with <code>df = pandas.DataFrame(d)</code> -- is there something comparable for plain NumPy record arrays? <code>np.rec.fromrecords(d)</code> doesn't seem to given me what I want.</p>