The Wildlife Encyclopedia
Explore all 545 species indexed across the encyclopedia. Every creature is paired with anatomical superpower breakdowns and musical subcultures.
Giant Freshwater Stingray
The 300-kilogram Mekong river phantom with a barbed tail spine and the record for the largest freshwater fish ever caught and officially recorded.
Giant Ground Pangolin
Overlapping keratin scales, a sticky tongue up to 70 centimeters long, and a defensive ball that's next to impossible to pry open.
Giant Huntsman Spider
A spider found in caves in Laos, with a leg span of up to 30 cm.
Giant Isopod
Deep-sea cousin of the pill bug, with about 3,500 lenses in each eye, that has been reported to survive eight weeks between meals in an aquarium.
Giant Oarfish
A silver ribbon reliably documented to 8 meters, with a red dorsal fin along its whole length, seen swimming upright in the open ocean.
Giant Oceanic Manta Ray
The ocean's largest ray has three pairs of fins, a wingspan of up to 26 feet, and can dive past 1,000 metres.
Giant Pacific Octopus
Three brains, three hearts, blue copper blood, and skin that changes color and texture.
Giant Panda
A carnivore-like gut, the strongest jaws of any bear, and a bony spare thumb, all pressed into a diet that's about 99% bamboo.
Giant Prickly Stick Insect
A leaf-mimic that sways like a branch in the breeze, and hatches looking like an ant.
Giant River Otter
The biggest of all the otters, the Amazon's "river wolf" has jaw leverage that should favor speed and an adult vocabulary of 22 distinct calls.
Giant Squid
The longest cephalopod. The longest one scientifically verified measured 12 m.
Giant Water Bug
A big water bug that stabs fish and tadpoles with its beak, and is drawn to lights.
Gila Monster
Bead-armored venomous lizard, grooved chewing teeth, and Sonoran Desert survivor.
Giraffe
Bulls can top eighteen feet, with a roughly twenty-five-pound heart built to fight gravity and an eighteen-inch tongue that dodges acacia thorns.
Glass Frog
See-through belly skin that shows off a beating heart, green bones, and a liver that can hide most of the frog's red blood cells.
Gloucestershire Old Spot Pig
Large lop ears, black spots on white, and a history of feeding on windfall fruit in English orchards.
Goat
A domesticated ruminant with rectangular pupils and a digestive system that works nonstop.
Goblin Shark
A deep-sea shark with slingshot jaws and skin that looks pink because blood vessels show through it.
Golden Eagle
A hunter with a wingspan of up to 2.3 meters that dives at up to 120 mph (193 km/h) and, on autumn migration across eastern North America, rides mostly on wind pushed up by ridges.
Golden Hamster
A 105 g Syrian burrower that keeps night hours in the lab, while wild females were active almost only by day.
Golden Jackal
The Eurasian canid that split from Africa's look-alike golden wolf more than a million years ago, then spread fast across Europe in the last century.
Golden Mole
The sand-swimmer with no visible eyes, and a middle-ear bone denser than any other land mammal's on record.
Golden Poison Frog
Considered the most poisonous animal in the world: a frog no larger than a bottle cap that produces enough nerve toxin at once to kill 10 people.
Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey
Narrows the blood vessels in its skin to cut heat loss, then burns 14 percent of its body mass getting through a winter in China's mountains.