The Wildlife Encyclopedia
Explore all 545 species indexed across the encyclopedia. Every creature is paired with anatomical superpower breakdowns and musical subcultures.
Grey Heron
A fish-eater that usually hunts by standing still, then generally swallows its catch whole.
Grey Parrot
A grey parrot named Griffin outperformed 5-year-old children on a cup logic test.
Grizzly Bear
The most distinctive shoulder hump of any brown bear, claws built for digging, and a fall feeding binge of about 20,000 calories a day.
Groundhog
The largest marmot in its range, a tunnelling rodent that sleeps through the winter and warns its neighbours with a shrill whistle.
Guinea Pig
A tailless rodent with six main calls and a habit of popcorning.
Gulper Eel (Pelican Eel)
A huge gape, a mouth that first unfolds and then inflates, and a glowing tail tip.
Hamadryas Baboon
Silver-maned sacred baboon of ancient Egypt, living in harems that stack into clans, bands and troops hundreds strong.
Harbor Seal
Whiskers that detect a swimming fish's wake, a heart rate that can drop to three or four beats a minute on a dive, and the widest range of any seal on Earth.
Harlequin Poison Frog
A rainforest frog just 2.5 to 3.8 centimetres long, painted like a warning label, its skin toxins collected straight from the ants, termites and beetles it eats.
Harpy Eagle
Apex canopy raptor armed with rear talons larger than a grizzly bear's claws.
Harris's Hawk
The desert wolf of the sky that hunts in cooperative, matriarchal tactical family packs.
Hellbender
North America's biggest salamander, breathing mostly through its own wrinkled skin instead of its lungs.
Helmeted Guineafowl
A speckled ground bird with a bony helmet and a very loud alarm call, and a knack for staying upright when the ground drops away.
Hercules Beetle
A rainforest giant up to seven inches long that fights with pliers for horns, carves bark with gear-locked jaws, and turns from khaki-green to black as the air gets humid.
Highland Cattle
A long, shaggy coat, handlebar horns, and roots in Scotland going back to the 6th century.
Hippopotamus
A one-and-a-half-tonne river giant that walks the riverbed instead of swimming, and oozes its own sunscreen.
Hispaniolan Solenodon
An ancient island insectivore whose venom, lab tests suggest, lowers blood pressure but fails to paralyse invertebrates.
Hoatzin (Stinkbird)
A cow-style fermenting crop, wing-clawed chicks that swim from danger, and a place on the bird family tree debated since it was described in 1776.
Honey Badger
A roughly 9 kg mustelid with loose skin, a muscle receptor that impedes snake toxin binding, and cobras among its prey.
House Centipede
The night hunter on 15 pairs of legs, with back legs that on adult females are nearly twice as long as its body.
House Mouse
A 12 to 30 gram squatter whose love songs are too high for human ears.
House Sparrow
A plain brown bird that developed regional differences in color and size in North America.
Housefly
A fly that tastes with its feet, sips only liquids and is a mechanical vector of more than 100 diseases.
Human Botfly
A bumblebee lookalike that glues its eggs to a blood-feeding carrier, usually a mosquito or a tick, which delivers them when it feeds.