Ambush Predator
Remaining motionless for hours in camouflage before launching lightning strikes the moment prey steps into range.
Alligator Snapping Turtle
The 200-pound riverbed dinosaur with a spiked shell, a 1,000-pound jaw trap, and a pink worm wriggling on its tongue.
Antlion
Its larva jerks sand out of a pit with its head and, when hungry, sucks its prey very dry.
Boa Constrictor
A nonvenomous snake that stops its prey's heart from pumping, and one mother on record who had daughters with no father.
Bobbit Worm
An ambush predator up to ten feet long that buries itself in the sand with its jaws cocked like a spring trap, ready to snap a passing fish in half.
Bobcat
A spotted, short-tailed stalker that steps its back feet into its front-foot prints to cut the noise of the hunt.
Burmese Python
A giant constrictor with stretchy jaws, and the Everglades invader linked to a 99.3 percent drop in raccoon sightings.
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.
European Mantis
A mantis that hears with a single ear on its underside, tuned to ultrasound.
Gaboon Viper
Africa's largest viper has a head that mimics a fallen leaf, and the longest fangs of any venomous snake, up to 5 cm long.
Great Blue Heron
Waits in shallow water, then strikes with a rapid thrust of the bill
Green Moray Eel
The reef predator that lies in wait in rock crevices, wearing a thick yellow mucus that turns its dark skin green and protects it from parasites and disease.
Grey Heron
A fish-eater that usually hunts by standing still, then generally swallows its catch whole.
Nile Crocodile
An armored crocodile whose skin is more touch-sensitive than a primate's fingertips.
Northern Pike
A freshwater ambush predator that lies cocked in an S, then strikes with a sprint.
Striated Frogfish
The lure-twitching frogfish whose surprise attack pulls in prey within six milliseconds as its mouth expands up to twelve times.
Timber Rattlesnake
The big eastern pit viper that senses heat, waits in ambush and rattles a warning first.
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
A desert pit viper with a heat-sensing pit on each side of its head. In one study, fasting snakes lost 30% of their body mass over 168 days.