Low
The overwhelming majority of life on Earth. Harmless to humans, and frequently far more interesting for it.
Star-Nosed Mole
A semi-aquatic mole armed with twenty-two fleshy sensory tentacles that can identify and eat a piece of prey in as little as 120 milliseconds.
Stoat
Takes on rabbits more than five times its size, dances in a way that seems to hypnotise them, and can turn snow-white in winter.
Strawberry Poison-Dart Frog
A 2-gram rainforest frog in warning colors, whose poison appears to come from the ants and mites it eats.
Striated Frogfish
The lure-twitching frogfish whose surprise attack pulls in prey within six milliseconds as its mouth expands up to twelve times.
Striped Skunk
The black-and-white warning sign that hisses, stamps and, if that fails, fires musk up to about twenty feet.
Suffolk Sheep
A jet-black, wool-free head and legs against a clean white fleece, on an English meat breed whose lambs can gain more than a pound a day.
Sugar Glider
Patagium gliding membrane, glides that can reach about 150 feet between trees, and an appetite for eucalyptus sap and sweet nectar.
Sunda Colugo
Southeast Asian mammal with a furred gliding membrane from neck to fingers, toes and tail, carrying it up to 100 metres with little height loss.
Sunda Pangolin
A scale-armored mammal that swishes its tail with its scales erect, then curls into a near-impregnable ball when threatened.
Superb Lyrebird
Ground-dwelling mimic whose courtship act includes a fake alarm-flock illusion convincing enough to fool real birds.
Surinam Toad
The flat, leaf-like toad that carries its developing young inside honeycomb pockets on the mother's back.
Swordfish
A fish with a heater for its brain and a flattened bill it apparently uses to slash prey.
Tardigrade (Water Bear)
Eight-legged micro-survivor that meets a dose of gamma rays by rapidly switching on many of its own DNA-repair genes.
Texas Horned Lizard
The armored desert lizard that turns its own eyes into blood-squirting weapons against predators.
Thorny Devil
Capillary skin channels that pull water from a puddle to its mouth, a spiny false head decoy, and big spines with no bone inside them.
Thorny Seahorse
A seahorse with extremely sharp spines, a crown on its head and fathers that carry the babies.
Three-Toed Sloth
A slow-metabolism canopy dweller whose fur hosts its own community of moths and algae.
Tiger Pistol Shrimp
One oversized claw fires a high-speed water jet whose collapsing bubble, in a related shrimp, hits at least 5,000 kelvin and flashes with light.
Toco Toucan
A blood-vessel-packed bill that doubles as a radiator, and a throat that takes fruit without the tongue ever touching it.
Tuatara
The sole survivor of an ancient reptile order: a nocturnal New Zealand islander with a light-sensitive third eye it does not see with, and a sliding jaw that makes a shearing bite.
Tufted Capuchin
A stocky Amazon monkey that smashes fruit its jaws cannot crack, or opens it with a piece of branch.
Turkey Vulture
A scavenger with a real nose, and a habit of riding warm air.
Vampire Squid
Oxygen-poor twilight-zone living, pulsing blue arm tips, and an inside-out pineapple posture.
Vaquita
A shy porpoise with the smallest range of any whale, dolphin or porpoise