Apex Predator
Occupies the top of its food chain with no natural predators as adults, maintaining balance across entire ecosystems.
African Lion
Pride king, 114-decibel territorial roar carrying three miles, and cooperative savanna hunt apex.
American Alligator
An armored reptile with jaws that can crack a turtle shell, and a mouth that can go through 3,000 teeth in a lifetime.
American Crocodile
A salt-tolerant crocodile with a tapered snout, and the first crocodilian with evidence of reproducing without a male.
Amur Leopard
The rarest big cat in the world, with fur up to three inches long in winter, living alone in the forests of the Russian Far East and northeast China.
Bald Eagle
An apex fish hunter with a talon grip ten times as strong as an average human's, carried on a wingspan of up to eight feet.
Bengal Tiger
Longest canines of any big cat, stripes as unique as a fingerprint, and the only tigers at home in mangroves.
Black Caiman
The Amazon's largest predator and the biggest member of the alligator family, with males that grow past four to five meters.
Blue-Ringed Octopus
Golf-ball sized tide pool titan flashing iridescent electric blue rings and deadly tetrodotoxin.
Bull Shark
Freshwater river invader, named for its stout build and a reputation for aggression, with a harder bite for its weight than a great white's.
Coconut Crab
Land arthropod of up to 4 kilograms, with coconut-cracking claws and a leg span of up to a meter.
Cougar
The solitary ghost cat of the Americas that can leap 40 feet in a single bound and purrs like a smaller cat.
Cuban Crocodile
One of the most threatened crocodilians in the Americas, able to leap from the water for prey on overhanging branches, with teeth adapted for crushing turtle shells.
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.
Fossa
Madagascar's largest carnivore, a cat-like relative of the mongoose that can climb down a tree headfirst.
Golden Eagle
A hunter with a wingspan of up to 2.3 meters that dives at up to 120 mph (193 km/h) and, on autumn migration across eastern North America, rides mostly on wind pushed up by ridges.
Great Hammerhead Shark
A hammer-shaped head wired with electric sensors, used to pin stingrays to the seafloor.
Great White Shark
Up to 4,500 pounds of apex predator, an electric sense tuned to 0.005 microvolts, and the largest fish known to keep parts of its body warmer than the sea.
Green Anaconda
Up to 550 pounds of camouflaged ambush predator, with eyes and nostrils on top of its head, that kills with suffocating coils.
Greenland Shark
The longest-lived vertebrate known to science, growing under a centimeter a year, with females not sexually mature until at least 156 years old, give or take 22.
Grizzly Bear
The most distinctive shoulder hump of any brown bear, claws built for digging, and a fall feeding binge of about 20,000 calories a day.
Harpy Eagle
Apex canopy raptor armed with rear talons larger than a grizzly bear's claws.
Hippopotamus
A one-and-a-half-tonne river giant that walks the riverbed instead of swimming, and oozes its own sunscreen.
Inland Taipan
Rated the most toxic venom of any snake in lab tests on mice, carried by a shy snake whose handful of known bite victims all survived.
Jaguar
Skull-piercing jaws, a powerhouse swimmer, and the largest cat in the Americas.