Scavenger
Feeding on animal carcasses, equipped with acidic digestive tracts that destroy deadly pathogens.
American Lobster
A seafloor crustacean with a crusher claw and a ripper claw. Scientists believe some may live to be 100 years old.
Andean Condor
The world's heaviest soaring bird: tracked condors flapped for just 1% of their flight time.
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.
Bearded Vulture
One of the few vertebrates that lives mostly on bone, which it breaks open by dropping it from the sky and digests in a stomach whose pH could be below 1.
Coconut Crab
Land arthropod of up to 4 kilograms, with coconut-cracking claws and a leg span of up to a meter.
Common Hermit Crab
A scavenger that lives in an empty sea snail shell and raps on rivals' shells to try to take over better ones.
European Herring Gull
A large, pink-legged gull that paddles its feet on the ground to bring worms up, and now nests on rooftops as well as cliffs.
Giant Isopod
Deep-sea cousin of the pill bug, with about 3,500 lenses in each eye, that has been reported to survive eight weeks between meals in an aquarium.
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.
Housefly
A fly that tastes with its feet, sips only liquids and is a mechanical vector of more than 100 diseases.
Japanese Spider Crab
The Pacific's leggiest scavenger: a giant crab known to grow up to twelve feet across, picking over the seafloor off Japan.
Red-Bellied Piranha
Razor-sharp interlocking teeth, a red belly, and a school that doubles as cover from predators.
Spotted Hyena
Bone-crushing jaws, matriarchal clan rule, and a whoop that carries for miles.
Striped Hyena
A raised mane that makes it look nearly twice its size, jaws built to crush bone, and a scavenger's range from northern Africa to India.
Turkey Vulture
A scavenger with a real nose, and a habit of riding warm air.