Extreme Survivor
Enduring severe ecological stress, extended starvation, and harsh environmental swings without failing.

African Lungfish
A fish that breathes air through two lungs and can live for over a year inside a cocoon of its own dried slime.

Atlantic Hagfish
The jawless North Atlantic scavenger whose slime glands unravel a coiled fiber bundle into a thread a hundred times longer in a fraction of a second.

Striped Skunk
The black-and-white warning sign that hisses, stamps and, if that fails, fires musk up to about twenty feet.

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.

Wood Frog
A frog that can let ice fill over a third of its body each winter, stop its own heart, and thaw out alive again each spring.