The Wildlife Encyclopedia
Explore all 545 species indexed across the encyclopedia. Every creature is paired with anatomical superpower breakdowns and musical subcultures.
Secretarybird
The stilt-legged snake executioner whose stomp, measured in one captive male, peaked at five times his body weight on average.
Serval
Savanna hunter with the longest legs and largest ears for its size of any cat, able to leap more than nine feet straight up to snatch a bird from the air.
Seven-Spot Ladybird
The red beetle that bleeds poison from its leg joints.
Shoebill Stork
Prehistoric-looking swamp stalker with a foot-long bill shaped like a clog.
Short-Beaked Echidna
The spiny, egg-laying mammal that digs into ant and termite nests and carries an electric sense in its snout.
Shortfin Mako Shark
Considered the fastest shark in the world: burst speeds up to 70 km/h, warm swimming muscle, and hook-like, razor-edged teeth.
Siamese Fighting Fish
A fish up to 6.5 cm long that breathes air through a labyrinth organ, and whose males flare their gill covers at each other.
Signal Crayfish
A plague-resistant crayfish brought to Europe to supplement stocks the plague decimated, and a carrier of the disease itself.
Silkworm
A caterpillar that grows thousands of times heavier in a month, then wraps itself in one silk thread up to 1,800 metres long.
Silverfish
A wingless, silver-scaled insect that keeps molting as an adult and can go up to a year without food.
Sloth Bear
Missing top front teeth, a vacuum-cleaner mouth for termites, and a stand-and-fight defense against tigers.
Snow Leopard
The "ghost cat of the Himalayas", with a tail up to a metre long and leaps of up to thirty feet.
Snow Petrel
An all-white Antarctic seabird that sometimes nests hundreds of kilometers inland and spits stomach oil that can build up around its nest for thousands of years.
Snowy Owl
A powerful owl of the Arctic tundra that often hunts by day, colored for winter camouflage and able to take birds as big as geese.
Sociable Weaver
The Kalahari architect that builds one shared straw mega-nest big enough for hundreds of birds, with some still standing more than a century later.
Sockeye Salmon
A silver sea-going fish that turns bright red and swims back to the freshwater system where it hatched.
South American Bushmaster
The longest of all vipers, able to aim a strike in the dark by body heat alone, from the only pit vipers in the Americas that lay eggs.
Southern Black Widow
Shiny black spider whose venom floods the nerve-muscle junction with acetylcholine and noradrenaline.
Southern Cassowary
A five-inch dagger-like claw on each foot, a leap of up to seven feet, and a casque that glows under ultraviolet light.
Southern Elephant Seal
The largest living carnivoran, with a roaring nose and blood built for breath-holds of up to two hours.
Southern Stingray
A diamond-shaped digger that flaps its fins to uncover prey and finds it by its electric field.
Spectacled Bear
South America's only native bear, an Andean climber with pale rings around its eyes that builds platforms in the trees.
Sperm Whale
Hunts on dives that routinely reach 610 meters, fires biosonar clicks up to 236 decibels underwater, and occasionally swallows giant and colossal squid.
Spitting Spider
A tiny house spider that entangles prey from a distance with a zigzag spray of silk, glue and venom, fired at up to 28.8 meters a second.