The Wildlife Encyclopedia
Explore all 545 species indexed across the encyclopedia. Every creature is paired with anatomical superpower breakdowns and musical subcultures.
Common Earwig
The garden insect whose mother grooms her eggs like a hen and may go as long as 7 months without feeding.
Common Eastern Firefly
A beetle whose males trace a J of light at dusk and bleed defensive steroids when attacked.
Common European Adder
A zigzag-backed viper that lives from Britain to the Pacific and is the only snake north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia.
Common Frog
The frog that lives as far north as the Arctic Circle and sits out winter under rocks or buried in pond mud.
Common Garter Snake
A North American snake, some of whose populations have evolved resistance to the toxin of the newts they eat.
Common Goldfish
The pond fish that makes alcohol to survive without oxygen and sees four colors, ultraviolet included.
Common Hermit Crab
A scavenger that lives in an empty sea snail shell and raps on rivals' shells to try to take over better ones.
Common Kingfisher
Electric-cobalt torpedo diver, riverbank jewel, and an underwater strike made by touch alone.
Common Loon
A dagger-billed diver with dense bones, a wolf-like wail and legs set too far back to walk well.
Common Octopus
A shallow-water hunter whose colour-changing skin is run by over half a million neurons, yet which is estimated to live one to two years.
Common Ostrich
The tallest and heaviest bird alive, sprinting in bursts of up to 43 miles an hour on two toes, with a kick powerful enough to kill a lion.
Common Pill Bug
A land-living crustacean that rolls into a ball, and in which bacterial DNA has become a new sex chromosome.
Common Raccoon
The emo masked bandit whose touch-tuned forepaws do its foraging and whose cat-sized brain packs its neurons at near-primate density.
Common Raven
The oversized scavenger that caches food out of rivals' sight, guards the stash when it might be seen, and is less willing to pull its weight after a partner cheats.
Common Starfish
A headless starfish that pries open mussels with its suction feet, then pushes its stomach inside the shell to digest them.
Common Vampire Bat
One of only three mammals that must feed on blood, it finds warm prey through heat-sensing pits on its face and crosses the ground on all fours to reach it.
Common Warthog
Tusked survivor that usually backs into a borrowed aardvark burrow, so its tusks face whatever comes calling.
Common Wasp
A paper-nest builder whose workers police the colony by eating worker-laid eggs.
Cookiecutter Shark
A shark up to 56 cm long that glows underneath to lure big animals close, then spins to cut a round plug out of them.
Corn Snake
The most commonly bred pet snake, and a lab model for how reptiles get their colours.
Cottonmouth
A swamp pit viper that warns with a wide-open white mouth and hunts on land and in water.
Cougar
The solitary ghost cat of the Americas that can leap 40 feet in a single bound and purrs like a smaller cat.
Coyote
The Song Dog that has faced more than 150 years of large-scale culling and still spread from Alaska to Panama.
Coypu
A webbed-footed marsh rodent with its eyes, ears and nostrils on top of its head.