Rainforest
Surviving intense tropical humidity, dense multi-tiered canopies, and fierce biological competition in jungle biomes.
Amazonian Giant Centipede
Venomous, up to 30 cm long, and its big ones are known to climb cave ceilings and catch bats.
Andean Cock-of-the-Rock
Peru's national bird: males court with synchronized moves and pig-like calls, and the female raises the chicks alone.
Army Ant
A colony of up to a million sisters that clings together as a living nest, then raids the forest floor as a fan-shaped army.
Asian Weaver Ant
Arboreal architects that pull leaves together, even forming living chains, then glue them with silk squeezed from their own larvae.
Aye-Aye
Nocturnal lemur with huge ears, ever-growing incisors, and a skeletal-looking middle finger that finds grubs by tapping.
Bengal Tiger
Longest canines of any big cat, stripes as unique as a fingerprint, and the only tigers at home in mangroves.
Binturong
Shaggy Southeast Asian bearcat that smells like hot buttered movie popcorn, climbing through tropical forest canopies with a thick prehensile tail.
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-and-Yellow Macaw
A blue-and-gold parrot that blushes red, crushes nuts and seeds in its beak, and drops in on riverbank clay licks to eat soil.
Boa Constrictor
A nonvenomous snake that stops its prey's heart from pumping, and one mother on record who had daughters with no father.
Bonobo
The Congo forest ape where the females rule the roost.
Bornean Orangutan
Borneo's biggest mammal in the trees: long arms for the canopy, hands and feet that both grip, and a long call that can be heard a kilometer or more away.
Brazilian Treehopper
A rainforest sap-drinker wearing a crown of glossy globes on slender horns, argued over by entomologists since 1903.
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.
Bullet Ant
A sting rated level four, the top of Schmidt's pain scale, from one of the giant ants known in Brazil as the twenty-four-hour ants.
Emperor Scorpion
The West African rainforest heavyweight that tears prey apart with its pincers and glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
Fossa
Madagascar's largest carnivore, a cat-like relative of the mongoose that can climb down a tree headfirst.
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.
Geoffroy's Spider Monkey
The monkey whose tail works as a fifth limb.
Giant Anteater
A toothless anteater whose 2-foot tongue flicks in and out up to 150 times a minute.
Giant Ground Pangolin
Overlapping keratin scales, a sticky tongue up to 70 centimeters long, and a defensive ball that's next to impossible to pry open.
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.
Glass Frog
See-through belly skin that shows off a beating heart, green bones, and a liver that can hide most of the frog's red blood cells.
Golden Poison Frog
Considered the most poisonous animal in the world: a frog no larger than a bottle cap that produces enough nerve toxin at once to kill 10 people.