Medium
Creatures with real weapons and little interest in using them on anything your size.
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 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.
Coyote
The Song Dog that has faced more than 150 years of large-scale culling and still spread from Alaska to Panama.
Desert Hairy Scorpion
North America's largest scorpion, digging burrows up to 2.5 meters underground and feeling vibrations through its hairs.
Donkey
A working equid whose hee-haw can travel up to 3 km, domesticated in Africa around 5000 BCE.
Dromedary
The desert animal that lets its body warm to 41.7 degrees Celsius instead of sweating as the day heats up.
Electric Catfish
A night hunter of the Nile and Lake Chad wrapped in a living battery, from a genus that can discharge up to 350 volts.
Emperor Scorpion
The West African rainforest heavyweight that tears prey apart with its pincers and glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
Emu
A flightless bird whose father sits on the eggs for eight weeks without eating or drinking.
Eurasian Lynx
Europe's biggest wildcat, snowshoe-pawed and able to kill prey up to three to four times its own size by biting down on the snout until it suffocates.
European Badger
Nocturnal digger with a striped face, sharp claws and a network of underground tunnels.
European Hornet
Central Europe's biggest vespine wasp, warmed by its own flight muscles.
Fisher
A fox-sized relative of weasels that climbs trees, hunts porcupines and whose females spend almost all of their adult lives pregnant or nursing.
Flamboyant Cuttlefish
Bottom-walking cephalopod that sends color waves across its skin and flashes warning colors to advertise its venom.
Fossa
Madagascar's largest carnivore, a cat-like relative of the mongoose that can climb down a tree headfirst.
Frilled Shark
A slow-swimming, six-gilled deep-sea shark whose lineage is estimated at 82 million years old and whose pregnancy may run three and a half years.
Gelada
The Ethiopian highland monkey that grazes mainly on grass, flashes a bleeding-heart chest patch, and rolls its lip back to bare its gums in a facial display no other primate can make.
Giant River Otter
The biggest of all the otters, the Amazon's "river wolf" has jaw leverage that should favor speed and an adult vocabulary of 22 distinct calls.
Giant Water Bug
A big water bug that stabs fish and tadpoles with its beak, and is drawn to lights.
Giraffe
Bulls can top eighteen feet, with a roughly twenty-five-pound heart built to fight gravity and an eighteen-inch tongue that dodges acacia thorns.
Goblin Shark
A deep-sea shark with slingshot jaws and skin that looks pink because blood vessels show through it.