The Wildlife Encyclopedia
Explore all 545 species indexed across the encyclopedia. Every creature is paired with anatomical superpower breakdowns and musical subcultures.
American Robin
A lawn hunter that weighs about as much as three AA batteries
Amur Leopard
The rarest big cat in the world, with fur up to three inches long in winter, living alone in the forests of the Russian Far East and northeast China.
Andean Cock-of-the-Rock
Peru's national bird: males court with synchronized moves and pig-like calls, and the female raises the chicks alone.
Andean Condor
The world's heaviest soaring bird: tracked condors flapped for just 1% of their flight time.
Antarctic Fur Seal
The hyper-dense furred beach warrior that came back from commercial extinction and is now declining again.
Antarctic Icefish
A Southern Ocean fish with no working red blood cells, whose nearly clear blood carries oxygen dissolved in plasma, along with its own antifreeze.
Antarctic Krill
A crustacean about 6 centimeters long, so abundant it can turn the sea reddish-brown, that most larger Antarctic animals depend on, directly or indirectly.
Antlion
Its larva jerks sand out of a pit with its head and, when hungry, sucks its prey very dry.
Arapaima
An Amazon giant that can reach three meters, breathes air through a lung-like swim bladder, and wears scale armor that resists piranhas.
Arctic Fox
Feet kept just above the point where living tissue freezes, a coat color set by one gene, and satellite-tracked treks of up to 40 kilometers to hotspots on the sea ice.
Arizona Bark Scorpion
North America's most venomous scorpion, and the best climber among Arizona's thirty scorpion species.
Armadillo Girdled Lizard
Heavily armored Karoo lizard that bites its own tail and curls into a spiky ball when threatened.
Army Ant
A colony of up to a million sisters that clings together as a living nest, then raids the forest floor as a fan-shaped army.
Asian Elephant
A boneless trunk with about 150,000 muscle units, a pregnancy of nearly two years, and rumbles humans can barely hear.
Asian Giant Hornet
The world's largest hornet, whose raiding parties can kill thousands of honeybees in a few hours.
Asian Tiger Mosquito
A striped mosquito that rode used tyres out of South-East Asia's forests and around the world, with eggs that can wait out a winter.
Asian Water Monitor
A semi-aquatic lizard that can reach 2.5 m, scent a rotten carcass up to 100 m away and prey on any vertebrate it can overpower.
Asian Weaver Ant
Arboreal architects that pull leaves together, even forming living chains, then glue them with silk squeezed from their own larvae.
Assassin Bug
The predatory bug that covers itself with the carcasses of ants, a disguise that seems to fool jumping spiders.
Atlantic Blue Crab
A paddle-legged swimmer with bright blue claws that sheds its hard shell as it grows.
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
A tuna up to 13 feet long that dives past 1,000 meters and keeps a warm body.
Atlantic Cod
A big bottom predator that lost an immune pathway jawed vertebrates normally keep.
Atlantic Flying Fish
The Atlantic glider that swims at up to about 30 km/h, then leaps out and glides as far as 12 meters.
Atlantic Hagfish
The jawless North Atlantic scavenger whose slime glands unravel a coiled fiber bundle into a thread a hundred times longer in a fraction of a second.