Omnivore
Flexible feeding strategy combining plant matter, fruits, insects, and meat depending on seasonal availability.
Mandrill
Males are the largest monkeys alive, with faces colored blue by light-scattering collagen and red by blood, and canine teeth whose length tracks their breeding years.
Maned Wolf
Stilt-legged golden canid of the cerrado that sees over tall grass and marks its territory with urine that reminds many people of a skunk.
Nile Tilapia
A mouth-brooding cichlid; in one lab strain, a Y-chromosome gene proved essential for maleness.
Northern Cardinal
A red songbird that turns yellow food pigments into scarlet feathers.
Ocellaris Clownfish
A reef fish about 8 cm long that shelters among stinging anemone tentacles, where the breeding male turns female if the female is lost.
Pine Marten
Cream-bibbed tree acrobat with ankles that rotate through 180 degrees for climbing up and down trees.
Potto
A slow, silent nocturnal primate that can hold still on a branch for long periods without fatigue, and presents predators with a shield of elongated neck-vertebra spines.
Pygmy Marmoset
The world's smallest monkey, small enough to fit in a human hand, gouges holes in tree bark and laps up the sap that puddles inside.
Red Imported Fire Ant
An ant a few millimetres long that links up with its nestmates into a raft that can float for days.
Red-Bellied Piranha
Razor-sharp interlocking teeth, a red belly, and a school that doubles as cover from predators.
Red-Eared Slider
Whether a slider hatches male or female depends on how warm its nest was.
Ring-Tailed Lemur
Black-and-white ringed tail, yoga-pose sun worship, and wrist gland scent wars.
Sandhill Crane
A red-capped crane that duets with its mate and sleeps standing in the shallows.
Signal Crayfish
A plague-resistant crayfish brought to Europe to supplement stocks the plague decimated, and a carrier of the disease itself.
Spectacled Bear
South America's only native bear, an Andean climber with pale rings around its eyes that builds platforms in the trees.
Striped Skunk
The black-and-white warning sign that hisses, stamps and, if that fails, fires musk up to about twenty feet.
Sugar Glider
Patagium gliding membrane, glides that can reach about 150 feet between trees, and an appetite for eucalyptus sap and sweet nectar.
Sun Bear
The world's smallest bear, 23 to 65 kg, with the longest tongue and a chest crescent as individual as a fingerprint.
Tufted Capuchin
A stocky Amazon monkey that smashes fruit its jaws cannot crack, or opens it with a piece of branch.
Veiled Chameleon
A tongue that can shoot to full length in 26 milliseconds, eyes that look two ways at once, and a casque that collects water.
Virginia Opossum
Fifty-toothed marsupial that fakes its own death through an involuntary catatonic collapse and is virtually immune to pit viper venom.
White-Nosed Coati
A long-nosed forager that sniffs scorpions and spiders out of the forest floor.
Wild Boar
A long-snouted omnivore whose upper canines are usually visible even when its mouth is closed.
Wild Turkey
Gobbles heard up to a mile away, flight at up to 54 mph