The amount of nodes isn't the same as the amount of witnesses. Witnesses are nodes that produce blocks. I run only one witness node, but I probably run upwards of 10 nodes. It's not easy to get a list of the active nodes, partly thats on purpose as it makes them more difficult to attack.
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I see, how come it can't be tracked? My guess is that a node is making calls regardless if it doesn't produce blocks. So it is still communicating and letting the network know is active.
It does, but it doesn't talk to all peers just some peers. And plenty of peers are behind firewalls so not directly addressable: they can call you, you can't call them. So since you can't call them, you have no idea if they are there unless they decide to contact your node (which they won't do as long as they have their desired number of peers).
Ok that makes sense