Animals of the world

300 animals, each with its own page: where it lives, how big it gets and what makes it special.

• Blue whale 100 000 kg The blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth, even bigger than the biggest dinosaurs.
• Sperm whale 40 000 kg The sperm whale has the largest brain of any animal on Earth and can dive deeper than almost any other mammal.
• Humpback whale 30 000 kg The humpback whale is famous for its long pectoral fins, spectacular breaches, and haunting underwater songs.
• Whale shark 19 000 kg The whale shark is the largest fish in the world, growing longer than a bus, yet it feeds only on some of the smallest creatures in the ocean.
• Orca 5 500 kg The orca, or killer whale, is the ocean's top predator, found in every sea from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
• African elephant 5 000 kg The African elephant is the largest land animal on Earth, living in family herds across the savannas of Africa.
• Basking shark 4 700 kg The basking shark is the second largest fish in the world, a grey giant that cruises slowly along the surface with its mouth wide open.
• White rhinoceros 2 100 kg The white rhinoceros is the largest of the five rhino species and the second-biggest land mammal after the elephant.
• Southern elephant seal 2 000 kg The southern elephant seal is the largest seal on Earth, and a grown male can weigh as much as forty people and carries a trunk-like nose.
• Hippopotamus 1 500 kg The hippopotamus is a massive, barrel-shaped mammal that spends most of the day in African rivers and lakes to keep cool.
• Giant oceanic manta ray 1 400 kg The giant oceanic manta ray is one of the largest fish in the ocean, with a wingspan that can stretch up to 7 metres across.
• Narwhal 1 200 kg The narwhal is famous for the male's long, spiralled tusk, which can grow up to 3 metres, earning it the nickname 'unicorn of the sea'.
• Walrus 1 200 kg The walrus is a huge Arctic seal relative known for its long ivory tusks and bristly whiskers.
• Beluga whale 1 150 kg The beluga is a small white whale of the Arctic that has no fin on its back and can turn its head to look around, which most whales cannot do.
• Great white shark 1 100 kg The great white shark is the largest predatory fish in the ocean, feared and misunderstood in equal measure.
• Giraffe 1 000 kg The giraffe is the tallest living land animal, browsing on treetops across the savannas of Africa.
• Ocean sunfish 1 000 kg The ocean sunfish looks like a huge swimming head, because its body ends just behind the two tall fins it rows through the water with.
• American bison 900 kg The American bison is the largest land mammal in North America, once roaming the Great Plains in herds of tens of millions.
• Gaur 900 kg The gaur is the largest wild cattle in the world, a forest animal of South and Southeast Asia that can weigh more than a tonne.
• Yak 800 kg The yak is a large, shaggy-haired bovine built to survive some of the highest, coldest places on Earth.
• African buffalo 650 kg The African buffalo is a powerful, herd-forming grazer found across the savannas and wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa.
• Bactrian camel 650 kg The Bactrian camel is the two-humped camel of Central Asia, built to survive the extreme heat and freezing cold of the Gobi Desert.
• Dromedary 500 kg The dromedary, or one-humped camel, is a desert animal so long domesticated that it no longer exists in its original wild form.
• Horse 500 kg A horse walks on a single toe on each leg, and the wall of the hoof is nothing other than the nail of that toe.
• Water buffalo 500 kg The water buffalo is a calm, powerful farm animal that pulls ploughs through flooded rice fields in Asia and gives very rich milk.
• Polar bear 450 kg The polar bear is the largest bear on Earth and lives on the sea ice of the Arctic.
• Moose 450 kg The moose is the largest species of deer in the world, standing tall in the cold forests and wetlands of the far north.
• Saltwater crocodile 450 kg The saltwater crocodile is the largest living reptile, with males growing up to 6 metres long.
• Nile crocodile 410 kg The Nile crocodile is Africa's largest crocodile and one of the continent's most feared predators, lying in wait at rivers and waterholes.
• Manatee 400 kg The manatee, sometimes called a sea cow, is a slow-moving, gentle giant that grazes on underwater plants in warm coastal waters.
• Tiger shark 400 kg The tiger shark is a huge tropical shark named after the dark bars along its sides, and it eats a wider range of food than any other shark.
• Leopard seal 350 kg The leopard seal is a long, powerful Antarctic seal with a huge jaw and a spotted throat, and it is one of the very few seals that hunts other seals.
• Zebra 300 kg The zebra is a wild relative of the horse, instantly recognisable by its bold black-and-white stripes.
• Bottlenose dolphin 300 kg The bottlenose dolphin is one of the most familiar and intelligent ocean animals, recognised by its curved mouth that looks like a permanent smile.
• Elk 280 kg The elk, or wapiti, is the second largest deer in the world, and in autumn the males call with a high whistling bugle that carries for kilometres.
• Brown bear 270 kg The brown bear is a powerful, shaggy-coated bear found across forests and mountains from North America to Europe and Asia.
• Galápagos tortoise 250 kg The Galápagos tortoise is the largest tortoise in the world and one of the longest-living animals on Earth, sometimes surviving more than 150 years.
• Okapi 250 kg The okapi looks like a horse with zebra stripes on its legs, but it is the giraffe's only close living relative and lives hidden in the rainforest of Congo.
• Great hammerhead shark 230 kg The great hammerhead shark is instantly recognisable by its wide, flattened head shaped like a hammer, called a cephalofoil.
• Atlantic bluefin tuna 230 kg The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a giant, torpedo-shaped fish that can cross a whole ocean and weighs about as much as three grown-ups.
• Lowland tapir 225 kg The lowland tapir is a heavy forest animal with a short, bendy trunk that it uses like a finger to pull leaves and fruit to its mouth.
• Tiger 220 kg The tiger is the biggest wild cat in the world, known for its orange coat and black stripes.
• California sea lion 220 kg The California sea lion is the fast, barking seal of the Pacific coast, easy to know by the small ear flaps on the side of its head.
• Red deer 200 kg The red deer is the large deer of Europe, and in autumn the forest belongs to it: the stags roar for weeks on end.
• Giant clam 200 kg The giant clam is the biggest shellfish in the sea: its two shells together span more than a metre and weigh as much as three grown-ups.
• Blue wildebeest 200 kg The blue wildebeest is a large grey antelope of the African grasslands, with curved horns, a dark mane and a shaggy beard.
• Lion 190 kg The lion is a huge wild cat that lives in prides on the grassy plains of Africa.
• Gorilla 160 kg The gorilla is the largest living primate, living in family groups in the rainforests of central Africa.
• Gharial 160 kg The gharial is a long river crocodilian from India and Nepal, easy to recognise by its thin snout set with more than a hundred teeth.
• Llama 150 kg The llama is a domesticated relative of the camel that has helped Andean communities carry goods across South America's high mountains for thousands of years.
• Domestic pig 150 kg The domestic pig is a clever farm animal with a strong, flat snout that it uses to dig through soil for roots, seeds and small creatures.
• Swordfish 150 kg The swordfish is a large ocean hunter with a long flat bill like a sword, which it swings sideways through shoals of squid and fish.
• Giant squid 150 kg The giant squid is a hunter of the deep sea with eight arms, two long tentacles and the largest eyes of any animal on Earth.
• Green sea turtle 135 kg The green sea turtle is named not for its shell but for the greenish fat beneath it, coloured by the algae and seagrass it eats.
• American black bear 120 kg The American black bear is the most common bear on Earth, and the one thing its name gets wrong is the colour: plenty of them are not black at all.
• Blue marlin 120 kg The blue marlin is a huge fish of the open Atlantic with a long pointed bill and a stiff fin that stands up on its back like a sail.
• Bull shark 115 kg The bull shark is a heavy, blunt-nosed shark that can live in salty sea water and in fresh river water, which almost no other shark manages.
• Reindeer 110 kg The reindeer, also called caribou in North America, is a hardy deer built to survive in the freezing Arctic tundra.
• Ostrich 104 kg The ostrich is the largest and heaviest living bird, standing up to 2.8 metres tall on the African savannah.
• Giant panda 100 kg The giant panda is a black-and-white bear that lives only in bamboo forests high in the mountains of China.
• Beluga sturgeon 100 kg The beluga sturgeon is one of the largest freshwater fish on Earth, an armoured giant that can outlive a human being.
• Sloth bear 100 kg The sloth bear is a shaggy black bear from India that lives mostly on termites and ants, which it sucks out of their nests like a vacuum cleaner.
• Jaguar 90 kg The jaguar is the largest big cat in the Americas, prowling the rainforests and wetlands of Central and South America.
• Alpine ibex 90 kg The Alpine ibex is a sure-footed wild goat that lives on steep, rocky slopes high in the European Alps.
• Wild boar 90 kg The wild boar is the ancestor of every farm pig, and it still lives in the forests of Europe and Asia.
• Harbour seal 85 kg The harbour seal is one of the most widespread seals, resting on rocky shores, sandbanks and ice along coasts throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
• Orangutan 75 kg The orangutan is a large, red-haired ape that lives almost entirely in the rainforest canopy of Borneo and Sumatra.
• Komodo dragon 70 kg The Komodo dragon is the largest lizard alive today, growing up to 3 metres long and hunting animals as large as water buffalo.
• Warthog 70 kg The warthog is a wild African pig with a broad flat face, four curved tusks and thick pads of skin on its cheeks that look like warts.
• White-tailed deer 70 kg The white-tailed deer is a slender brown deer of North and Central America that lifts its bright white tail like a flag when it senses danger.
• Alpaca 65 kg The alpaca is a small, fluffy relative of the llama, bred by Andean people for thousands of years mainly for its soft, warm wool.
• Leopard 60 kg The leopard is a powerful, spotted big cat found across more habitats than any other wild cat, from African savannas to Asian forests.
• Green anaconda 60 kg The green anaconda is the heaviest snake in the world, a thick olive-green hunter from the warm, slow waters of South America.
• Aardvark 60 kg The aardvark digs its way through the African night with spade-shaped claws, opening termite mounds that are nearly as hard as stone.
• Spotted hyena 60 kg The spotted hyena looks a bit like a big dog, but it is not a dog at all: its closest relatives are cats, mongooses and civets.
• Red kangaroo 55 kg The red kangaroo is the largest marsupial on Earth, bounding across the dry outback of inland Australia in powerful hops.
• Puma 55 kg The puma is a long-tailed cat of the Americas, and it lives everywhere from the snowy mountains of Canada to the dry plains of Patagonia.
• Cheetah 50 kg The cheetah is the fastest land animal on Earth, built for explosive speed rather than strength.
• Capybara 50 kg The capybara is the biggest rodent in the world, a calm grass-eater from South America that can weigh as much as a grown person.
• Vicuña 50 kg The vicuña lives higher up than almost any other hoofed animal, on cold Andean plains more than 3 500 metres above the sea.
• Chimpanzee 45 kg The chimpanzee is humankind's closest living relative, sharing nearly 99% of our DNA.
• Sun bear 45 kg The sun bear is the smallest bear in the world, a black forest climber with a pale horseshoe mark on its chest and a very long tongue.
• Southern cassowary 45 kg The southern cassowary is a flightless rainforest bird as tall as an adult person, with a bony helmet on its head and a bright blue neck.
• Pronghorn 45 kg The pronghorn is a sandy brown and white hoofed animal of the North American prairies and the fastest runner on the whole continent.
• Vaquita 43 kg The vaquita is the smallest porpoise in the world and lives in one small corner of the Gulf of California, in Mexico, and nowhere else.
• Snow leopard 40 kg The snow leopard is a rare, thick-furred big cat that lives high in the mountains of Central Asia.
• Grey wolf 40 kg The grey wolf is the ancestor of all pet dogs and one of the most widespread wild predators, once ranging across most of the Northern Hemisphere.
• Giant anteater 40 kg The giant anteater walks slowly across South American grassland with its long nose near the ground, sniffing out hidden ant nests.
• Bonobo 39 kg The bonobo is a great ape that lives in one country only, in the rainforest of the Congo Basin south of the Congo River.
• Emu 37 kg The emu is Australia's largest bird and the second-largest bird in the world after the ostrich.
• Chamois 35 kg The chamois is a nimble goat-antelope that bounds across steep, rocky terrain in the mountains of Europe.
• Emperor penguin 30 kg The emperor penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all penguins, living and breeding on the frozen sea ice around Antarctica.
• Sea otter 27 kg The sea otter has the densest fur of any animal, with about 150 000 hairs per square centimetre, keeping it warm without a layer of blubber.
• Wombat 26 kg The wombat is a sturdy, burrowing Australian marsupial with short legs and powerful claws for digging.
• Reticulated python 25 kg The reticulated python is the longest snake species in the world, with some individuals measured at over 6 metres.
• Dog 25 kg The dog was the first animal to live alongside people, thousands of years before sheep or cattle and long before anyone grew grain.
• Chinese giant salamander 25 kg The Chinese giant salamander is the largest amphibian on Earth, a wrinkly river giant that can grow longer than a child is tall.
• Thomson's gazelle 23 kg Thomson's gazelle is a small, very fast antelope of the East African plains, easy to know by the broad black band along its side.
• Maned wolf 23 kg The maned wolf is a tall animal with red fur and black stockings that walks the grasslands of South America on stilt-like legs.
• Roe deer 22 kg The roe deer is the small deer of European fields and forest edges, and the one people here are most likely to see.
• Eurasian beaver 20 kg The Eurasian beaver is the largest rodent in Europe, famous for building dams and lodges out of branches, mud and stones.
• Eurasian lynx 20 kg The Eurasian lynx is the largest wild cat in Europe, recognisable by its tufted ears, short tail and spotted coat.
• Olive baboon 20 kg The olive baboon is a large, greenish-grey monkey that lives in noisy troops on the savannas and open woodlands of central Africa.
• Wels catfish 18 kg The wels catfish is the biggest freshwater fish in Europe, a smooth, scaleless giant that hunts in the dark with six long barbels.
• Crested porcupine 18 kg The crested porcupine is a big night-roaming rodent whose back is covered in black and white quills, some of them as long as your forearm.
• Red-necked wallaby 16 kg The red-necked wallaby is a medium-sized kangaroo from eastern Australia, named after the reddish-brown fur across its neck and shoulders.
• Giant Pacific octopus 15 kg The giant Pacific octopus is the largest octopus species in the world, with an arm span that can stretch over 4 metres.
• Electric eel 15 kg The electric eel is a long, round-bodied fish from South American rivers that can make its own electricity inside its body.
• Dingo 15 kg The dingo is Australia's wild dog, a slim sandy hunter that howls instead of barking and has lived on the continent for thousands of years.
• Proboscis monkey 15 kg The proboscis monkey is a reddish brown monkey from the island of Borneo, and the males carry a drooping nose bigger than a human hand.
• Coyote 13 kg The coyote is a slim wild dog of North America, smaller than a wolf, with big ears, a narrow muzzle and a bushy black-tipped tail.
• Wolverine 13 kg The wolverine is the largest land member of the weasel family, a stocky animal the size of a small dog with remarkable strength for its build.
• Ground pangolin 12 kg The ground pangolin is a shy African mammal covered in hard scales of keratin, the same material as our fingernails.
• Caracal 12 kg The caracal is a slender wild cat with long black tufts on its ears that hunts in the dry savannas and rocky hills of Africa and western Asia.
• Ocelot 12 kg The ocelot is a spotted wild cat of Central and South America, about twice the size of a house cat and marked like a small jaguar.
• European badger 11 kg The European badger is a stocky, black-and-white striped mammal that digs huge underground burrow systems called setts.
• Mute swan 11 kg The mute swan is one of the heaviest flying birds in the world, gliding gracefully across lakes and rivers with its curved neck and orange bill.
• Great white pelican 11 kg The great white pelican has one of the largest wingspans of any bird, up to 3 metres across, and a huge stretchy throat pouch.
• Andean condor 11 kg The Andean condor has one of the widest wingspans of any flying bird, reaching up to about 3.3 metres from one tip to the other.
• Serval 11 kg The serval is a slim African wild cat with golden spotted fur, and for its size it has the longest legs and the largest ears of any cat.
• Common snapping turtle 10 kg The common snapping turtle is a heavy freshwater turtle from North America with a hooked beak and a long, saw-toothed tail.
• Japanese macaque 10 kg The Japanese macaque lives further north than any other wild monkey, in Japanese mountain forests that lie deep under snow all winter.
• Honey badger 10 kg The honey badger is a stocky black and grey relative of weasels that digs out snakes, raids bee nests and backs down from almost nothing.
• Atlantic cod 10 kg The Atlantic cod is a large, heavy fish of the cold northern seas, easy to recognise by the single whisker hanging from its chin.
• Bobcat 9.6 kg The bobcat is a wild cat about twice the size of a house cat, named after its short stubby tail, which is only a hand long.
• Koala 9 kg The koala is a tree-dwelling Australian marsupial that eats almost nothing but eucalyptus leaves.
• Eurasian otter 9 kg The Eurasian otter is a sleek, playful swimmer found in rivers, lakes and coastlines across Europe and Asia.
• Wandering albatross 8.5 kg The wandering albatross has the longest wings of any living bird and spends almost all of its life gliding over the cold Southern Ocean.
• Tasmanian devil 8 kg The Tasmanian devil is the world's largest carnivorous marsupial, now found only on the island of Tasmania.
• Griffon vulture 8 kg The griffon vulture is a huge scavenging bird that sails over the mountains of southern Europe on wings nearly three metres across.
• Nile monitor 8 kg The Nile monitor is the longest lizard in Africa, a strong swimmer that grows to two metres and flicks out a long forked tongue to taste the air.
• Black-handed spider monkey 7.5 kg The black-handed spider monkey is a long-limbed monkey of Central American rainforests whose tail works like a fifth hand.
• Raccoon 7 kg The raccoon is a clever, ring-tailed mammal easily recognised by the black mask across its eyes.
• Coypu 7 kg The coypu is a large water rodent from South America with bright orange front teeth and a long round tail like a rat's.
• King cobra 6 kg The king cobra is the world's longest venomous snake, capable of growing up to 5.5 metres.
• Wild turkey 6 kg The wild turkey is a large forest bird of North America that nearly died out in the 1930s and today numbers in the millions again.
• Great barracuda 6 kg The great barracuda is a long silver reef fish with a jaw full of dagger teeth that hangs motionless in the water and then attacks in a single burst.
• Red fox 5.5 kg The red fox is the most widespread wild carnivore in the world, living everywhere from forests and farmland to busy city streets.
• Nine-banded armadillo 5.5 kg The nine-banded armadillo is a small mammal covered in a tough, bony armour shell, found from the southern United States down through South America.
• Red panda 5.5 kg The red panda is a cat-sized animal with rust-red fur and a striped tail that lives in the bamboo forests of the Himalayas.
• Shoebill 5.2 kg The shoebill is a huge grey swamp bird with a bill shaped like a wooden clog, broad enough to swallow a lungfish whole.
• Alpine marmot 5 kg The Alpine marmot is a large, burrowing rodent that lives in family colonies on high mountain meadows across the European Alps.
• Indian peafowl 5 kg The peacock, or Indian peafowl, is famous for the male's dazzling train of iridescent blue-green feathers.
• Common carp 5 kg The common carp is a heavy, golden fish with four whiskers on its lips, and it roots through the mud on the bottom for food.
• Common crane 5 kg The common crane is a tall grey bird with a small red patch on its head and a loud trumpeting call that carries for kilometres.
• Bald eagle 4.5 kg The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States, known for its white head and tail feathers.
• Golden eagle 4.5 kg The golden eagle is one of the largest and fastest birds of prey, soaring over mountains and open country across the Northern Hemisphere.
• European wildcat 4.5 kg The European wildcat looks like a sturdy grey tabby, but it is a wild species of its own, with a thick blunt tail ringed in black.
• Atlantic salmon 4.5 kg The Atlantic salmon hatches in a gravel bed in a river, swims out to the open sea, and years later comes back to the very same river.
• South American coati 4.5 kg The South American coati is a slim, long-nosed relative of the raccoon that roams the forests of South America with its ringed tail held straight up.
• Brown-throated sloth 4 kg The brown-throated sloth is one of the slowest-moving mammals on Earth, spending nearly its whole life hanging upside down in rainforest trees.
• Green iguana 4 kg The green iguana is a large, tree-dwelling lizard with a spiny crest running down its back.
• Domestic cat 4 kg The domestic cat is the same species everywhere in the world, and it came to live with people by itself: its wild ancestor moved into the first grain stores to hunt mice.
• Groundhog 4 kg The groundhog is a heavy ground squirrel of North America that digs long burrows and sleeps through the entire winter without waking up.
• Short-beaked echidna 4 kg The short-beaked echidna is a spiny Australian mammal that lays eggs, has no teeth at all and licks up ants with a long, sticky tongue.
• Common stingray 4 kg The common stingray is a flat, diamond-shaped fish that lies buried in the sand of the Mediterranean with only its eyes showing.
• Rock hyrax 4 kg The rock hyrax looks like a fat guinea pig, but its closest living relatives are the elephant and the manatee, not any rodent.
• Arctic fox 3.5 kg The Arctic fox is a small, hardy fox built to survive the freezing cold of the Arctic tundra.
• Quokka 3.5 kg The quokka is a small, cat-sized marsupial famous for its friendly, smiling face, found mainly on Rottnest Island off the coast of Western Australia.
• European brown hare 3.5 kg The European brown hare is a fast, long-legged relative of the rabbit that lives out in the open, unlike rabbits which shelter in burrows.
• Striped skunk 3.5 kg The striped skunk is a cat-sized black mammal with two white stripes down its back and a spray so foul it can be smelled far away.
• White stork 3.4 kg The white stork is a tall black-and-white bird with long red legs and a long red bill, famous for nesting on roofs and chimneys.
• Greylag goose 3.3 kg The greylag goose is the ancestor of nearly every farmyard goose, and it taught science something that changed how we think about growing up.
• Greater flamingo 3 kg The greater flamingo is the largest flamingo species, wading through shallow salt lakes and lagoons on its long, thin legs.
• Northern pike 3 kg The northern pike is a long, green predator fish that hides among water plants and shoots out to snatch passing fish.
• Chicken 2.5 kg The chicken is the most numerous bird on Earth: more than twenty-six billion of them live with people, in coops, gardens and on farms.
• Brown kiwi 2.5 kg The brown kiwi is a flightless bird from New Zealand that hunts worms in the dark and smells them with nostrils at the tip of its bill.
• Common brushtail possum 2.5 kg The common brushtail possum is a cat-sized Australian marsupial with a bushy tail that can grip branches like a fifth hand.
• Great cormorant 2.5 kg The great cormorant is a large dark waterbird with a hooked bill that dives from the surface and chases fish under water with powerful kicks.
• Virginia opossum 2.3 kg The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial living wild north of Mexico, which makes it North America's one and only pouched animal.
• European lobster 2 kg A living European lobster is deep blue with pale speckles, and it only turns the bright red you know from pictures once heat gets to it.
• Atlantic horseshoe crab 2 kg The Atlantic horseshoe crab is a helmet-shaped sea animal with nine eyes and pale blue blood, and it is not a crab at all but a relative of spiders.
• Coconut crab 2 kg The coconut crab is the largest land crab in the world, with a leg span of about one metre and claws strong enough to break open a coconut.
• Box jellyfish 2 kg The box jellyfish is a pale, almost see-through sea animal with a bell shaped like a cube and long trailing tentacles that carry a powerful sting.
• Snowy owl 1.8 kg The snowy owl is one of the largest owls in the world and one of the few active during daylight.
• Western diamondback rattlesnake 1.8 kg The western diamondback rattlesnake is one of the most common and dangerous rattlesnakes in North America, named for the diamond pattern along its back.
• Banded mongoose 1.8 kg The banded mongoose is a small, stripy hunter of the African savanna that lives in large family groups and spends the day digging for beetles.
• Beech marten 1.6 kg The beech marten is the wild animal most likely to be asleep above your head: in towns it dens almost entirely in buildings.
• European rabbit 1.5 kg The European rabbit is the wild ancestor of all pet and farm rabbits, originally from Spain and Portugal.
• Pine marten 1.5 kg The pine marten is a slender forest hunter with a creamy yellow bib on its throat, and it climbs through the treetops like a squirrel.
• Grey heron 1.5 kg The grey heron is a tall grey water bird that stands at the edge of lakes and rivers across Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.
• Osprey 1.5 kg The osprey is a bird of prey that hunts fish by diving into the water feet first, and it can close its nostrils on the way down.
• Ball python 1.5 kg The ball python is a short, thick snake from the grasslands of West Africa that curls into a tight ball with its head tucked inside when it is frightened.
• Common cuttlefish 1.5 kg The common cuttlefish is a sea animal that can change the colour and pattern of its skin in less than a second and then vanish against the sand.
• Great horned owl 1.4 kg The great horned owl is a powerful night hunter of the Americas, named after the two tufts of feathers on its head that look like horns or ears.
• Muskrat 1.3 kg The muskrat is a water rodent that builds its own island out of reeds and mud, and it can stay under water far longer than any person could.
• Platypus 1.3 kg The platypus is an Australian mammal that lays eggs, has a bill like a duck and webbed feet, and hunts underwater with its eyes closed.
• Common raven 1.2 kg The common raven is the largest songbird in the world: an all-black bird with a heavy beak and a deep, croaking voice.
• Fennec fox 1.2 kg The fennec fox is the smallest fox in the world, a pale desert animal whose ears grow almost as long as its whole head.
• Mallard 1.1 kg The mallard is the duck almost everyone knows, and almost every domestic duck breed in the world descends from this one species.
• Common pheasant 1.1 kg The common pheasant is a large ground bird whose male wears copper-red feathers, a bottle-green head and a tail longer than his body.
• Herring gull 1.1 kg The herring gull is the big grey-and-white seabird that screams over harbours and beaches in northern Europe, the bird most people simply call a seagull.
• Scarlet macaw 1 kg The scarlet macaw is one of the largest and most colourful parrots, with brilliant red, yellow and blue feathers.
• Guinea pig 1 kg The guinea pig is a small, round rodent from the Andes that whistles for food and hops in the air when it feels happy.
• Chambered nautilus 1 kg The chambered nautilus drifts along steep reef walls in a coiled shell that is divided inside into about thirty sealed chambers.
• European eel 1 kg The European eel begins life as a see-through leaf-shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, far out in the western Atlantic Ocean.
• Brown trout 1 kg The brown trout is a spotted river fish that needs cold, clean water with plenty of oxygen, and it hunts insects at dusk.
• Red-bellied piranha 1 kg The red-bellied piranha is a silver river fish from South America with an orange belly and a jaw full of triangular teeth.
• Pufferfish 1 kg Pufferfish are round, slow swimmers that gulp water to blow themselves up into a ball far too big for most hunters to swallow.
• American mink 1 kg The American mink is a slim, chocolate-brown hunter that swims and dives in rivers and lakes and can stay underwater for almost a minute.
• Black-tailed prairie dog 1 kg The black-tailed prairie dog is not a dog at all but a stout ground squirrel that digs huge burrow towns on the plains of North America.
• Black mamba 1 kg The black mamba is one of the longest and fastest venomous snakes in Africa, and its name comes from the inky black inside of its mouth.
• Indian flying fox 1 kg The Indian flying fox is one of the largest bats in the world, with wings that span up to one and a half metres and a face much like a fox.
• Peregrine falcon 900 g The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth, but only when it folds its wings and drops out of the sky in a dive.
• Sulphur-crested cockatoo 850 g The sulphur-crested cockatoo is a big white parrot that raises a yellow crest like a fan, and its screech carries right across a valley.
• European hedgehog 800 g The European hedgehog is a small, spiny mammal that curls into a tight ball when threatened.
• Meerkat 700 g The meerkat is a small, sociable mongoose relative that lives in tight family groups in the dry grasslands of southern Africa.
• Tuatara 700 g The tuatara looks like a lizard but is not one: it is the last survivor of an ancient group of reptiles, and it lives only in New Zealand.
• Gila monster 700 g The Gila monster is a heavy black-and-orange desert lizard covered in bead-like scales, and one of the very few lizards with a venomous bite.
• Corn snake 700 g The corn snake is a slim orange snake of the American Southeast with a checkered belly, and it kills mice by wrapping around them rather than by biting.
• Toco toucan 600 g The toco toucan has the largest beak of any bird relative to its body size, a bright orange tool it uses for reaching fruit.
• Atlantic puffin 500 g The Atlantic puffin is a small seabird known for its brightly coloured beak and clown-like face, nicknamed the 'sea parrot'.
• Carrion crow 500 g The carrion crow is that black bird on the lamp post which seems to be watching you, and it probably is.
• Red lionfish 500 g The red lionfish is a striped reef fish whose long fins spread out like a mane and carry eighteen spines filled with venom.
• Chinchilla 420 g The chinchilla is a small rodent from the Andes with the densest fur of any land mammal, since up to fifty hairs grow from a single root.
• Barn owl 400 g The barn owl is famous for its heart-shaped white face and silent flight, and it is one of the most widespread birds in the world.
• Greater roadrunner 380 g The greater roadrunner is a long-legged desert bird that would rather run than fly, chasing lizards and insects across hot open ground.
• Red squirrel 300 g The red squirrel is a small, agile tree-dweller found in forests across Europe and Asia, known for its bushy tail and ear tufts.
• Brown rat 300 g The brown rat is one of the most successful mammals on Earth and lives on every continent except Antarctica, almost always close to people.
• Rock dove 300 g The rock dove is the grey bird every city knows as a pigeon, and every pigeon in the world, tame or wild, comes from this one species.
• Sea cucumber 300 g The sea cucumber is a soft, sausage shaped animal that creeps slowly over the sea floor and is a close relative of the starfish.
• Eurasian magpie 220 g The Eurasian magpie is a black and white crow with a very long tail that shimmers green and blue when the light catches it.
• Stoat 220 g The stoat is a small hunter with a very long body, slim enough to follow a mouse into its tunnel and bold enough to kill a rabbit.
• Grass snake 200 g The grass snake is an excellent swimmer with two pale yellow crescents behind its head, and it is completely harmless to people.
• Flying fish 200 g A flying fish does not really fly, but it can leave the sea and glide above the waves on stiff fins that open out like a pair of wings.
• Goldfish 200 g The goldfish is a small orange carp that people in China began breeding more than a thousand years ago, from a plain silvery river fish.
• Goliath birdeater 175 g The goliath birdeater is the largest spider in the world by weight and body size, with a leg span as wide as a dinner plate.
• Panther chameleon 150 g The panther chameleon is famous for its ability to change colour in flashes of red, orange, green and blue.
• Axolotl 150 g The axolotl is a strange salamander that never grows up, keeping its feathery gills and living underwater for its whole life.
• Common starfish 150 g The common starfish has neither a head nor a face, and yet at the tip of every single one of its arms there sits a tiny eye.
• Common garter snake 150 g The common garter snake is a slim striped snake of North American gardens and meadows, and it is the snake people there see most often.
• Sugar glider 130 g The sugar glider is a small night-time marsupial that sails through the forest on a flap of skin stretched between its front and back legs.
• Golden hamster 120 g The golden hamster is a small sandy-brown rodent that digs long tunnels under the dry fields of northern Syria and southern Turkey.
• Common cuckoo 120 g The common cuckoo is a slim grey bird that never builds a nest of its own and never raises a single one of its own chicks.
• European mole 100 g The mole spends almost its whole life underground, digging tunnels with hands turned outwards like shovels.
• Common adder 100 g The common adder is Europe's northernmost snake and the only venomous one in Britain, Scandinavia and much of northern Europe.
• Common blackbird 100 g The blackbird singing on a rooftop in town is really a newcomer, because two hundred years ago its family lived only in shy, deep forest.
• Deep-sea anglerfish 100 g The deep-sea anglerfish hunts in cold black water far below the sunlight, using a glowing lure that hangs from a thin rod on its head.
• Eastern chipmunk 100 g The eastern chipmunk is a small striped squirrel of North American woodlands that carries food in stretchy pouches inside its cheeks.
• Great spotted woodpecker 85 g The great spotted woodpecker is a black-and-white bird the size of a blackbird that hammers on trees to send a message.
• Sea urchin 80 g A sea urchin looks like a pincushion glued to a rock, but it really walks: between the spines stretch hundreds of tiny suction feet.
• Common starling 80 g The common starling is a glossy dark bird speckled with pale spots in winter that gathers in huge evening flocks called murmurations.
• Leopard gecko 65 g The leopard gecko is a spotted lizard from the dry hills of Asia, and unlike almost every other gecko it can blink and shut its eyes.
• Southern flying squirrel 65 g The southern flying squirrel is a small night-time squirrel of North American woods that glides from tree to tree on flaps of skin between its legs.
• Mudskipper 50 g A mudskipper is a fish that spends most of its life out of the water, walking over the mud on its front fins and staring with goggle eyes.
• Common toad 50 g The common toad is a stocky brown amphibian with warty skin and copper-coloured eyes that hunts on the ground after dark.
• Giant centipede 50 g The giant centipede is the largest centipede in the world, a hunter as long as your forearm that climbs cave ceilings and catches bats in mid-air.
• Common kingfisher 40 g The common kingfisher is a small, jewel-coloured bird with brilliant blue and orange feathers, often seen as a flash of colour along rivers and streams.
• Fire salamander 35 g The fire salamander is a black amphibian with bright yellow markings that warn every hungry bird to leave this small animal alone.
• Golden poison frog 30 g The golden poison frog is tiny but is considered the most poisonous animal on Earth, coated in enough toxin to be extremely dangerous.
• Slow worm 30 g The slow worm looks exactly like a small bronze snake, but it is not a snake at all: it is a lizard whose legs disappeared long ago.
• Roman snail 30 g The Roman snail carries its own house on its back, a pale spiral shell that can grow as wide as a small plum and weighs a fair bit.
• Emperor scorpion 30 g The emperor scorpion is one of the largest scorpions in the world, a glossy black animal about as long as a school ruler is wide and then some.
• Hermit crab 30 g A hermit crab has a soft, curled back end, so it moves into the empty shell of a dead sea snail and carries that borrowed house everywhere.
• Clownfish 25 g The clownfish is a small, bright orange reef fish famous for its unusual friendship with stinging sea anemones.
• Common frog 23 g The common frog is one of the very first animals to wake up after winter, and in a mild year it is already laying its spawn in February.
• Common nightingale 21 g The nightingale is a plain brown songbird, hardly bigger than a sparrow, famous for the loud and endlessly varied song the males pour out at night.
• House mouse 20 g The house mouse came out of Asia and followed people to nearly every corner of the world, living wherever there is food and a gap to hide in.
• Olm 20 g The olm is a pale, blind salamander that spends its whole long life in the cold water of caves, far below the hills of south-east Europe.
• Barn swallow 19 g The barn swallow is a fast blue and white bird with a deeply forked tail that builds its nest of mud inside barns and open sheds.
• Sand lizard 15 g In spring the male sand lizard turns bright green along his sides, as if somebody had painted him, while the female stays plain brown.
• Blue tit 11 g The blue tit is a small woodland bird with a sky-blue cap, white cheeks and a bright yellow front, barely heavier than a pencil.
• Great crested newt 10 g The great crested newt is the largest newt in northern Europe, a dark, warty amphibian with a bright orange belly covered in black blotches.
• Red-eyed tree frog 8 g The red-eyed tree frog is one of the most recognisable rainforest animals, with vivid green skin, orange feet and startling red eyes.
• European tree frog 8 g The European tree frog is a small bright green frog that climbs reeds and bushes using round sticky pads on the tips of its toes.
• Common pipistrelle bat 5 g The common pipistrelle is one of the smallest and most widespread bats in Europe, weighing about as much as a two-euro coin.
• Common earthworm 5 g The common earthworm eats dead leaves and turns them into soil.
• Stag beetle 4 g The stag beetle is the largest beetle in Europe, and the male carries two huge brown jaws that look exactly like a deer's antlers.
• Ruby-throated hummingbird 3.4 g The ruby-throated hummingbird is a tiny bird weighing about as much as a coin, yet it can fly hundreds of kilometres non-stop.
• Praying mantis 3 g The praying mantis holds its spiny front legs folded as if praying, then snaps them shut on a fly in a fraction of a second.
• Dung beetle 2 g The dung beetle shapes fresh animal droppings into a round ball and rolls it away in a straight line before burying it as food.
• Desert locust 2 g The desert locust is a grasshopper that changes colour and behaviour when many of them are pressed together in one small place.
• Antarctic krill 2 g Antarctic krill is a shrimp-like animal about six centimetres long that swims in swarms so dense the water turns pink.
• Pygmy chameleon 2 g Pygmy chameleons are not one species but a whole group of tiny chameleons living in the forests of Madagascar and East Africa.
• Siamese fighting fish 2 g The Siamese fighting fish, or betta, is a small aquarium fish from Thailand whose males spread huge coloured fins and cannot stand the sight of each other.
• Emperor dragonfly 1 g The emperor dragonfly is one of Europe's biggest dragonflies, and it catches midges, butterflies and other insects in mid-air while flying.
• Stick insect 1 g A stick insect is a living twig: so slim, so brown or green and so utterly still that a hungry bird flies straight past it.
• Stony coral 1 g A stony coral is not a plant but a colony of tiny animals, each one a soft polyp sitting in its own cup of hard white limestone.
• American cockroach 1 g The American cockroach is the largest cockroach that lives in houses, a shiny reddish-brown insect that covers fifty times its own body length in a second.
• Black widow 1 g The black widow is a small, glossy black spider with a red hourglass under her belly, and her venom is stronger drop for drop than a snake's.
• Monarch butterfly 0.5 g The monarch butterfly is famous for its incredible multi-generational migration between North America and Mexico.
• Millipede 0.5 g A millipede looks like a small dark train of many rings, and along its sides a wave of tiny legs keeps rippling from back to front.
• European hornet 0.5 g The European hornet is the largest wasp in Europe, a brown and yellow insect whose queens can reach 35 millimetres.
• Buff-tailed bumblebee 0.2 g The buff-tailed bumblebee is already out on cold grey mornings, when honeybees are still indoors, because she can warm herself up first.
• Western honey bee 0.1 g The western honey bee lives in highly organised colonies of tens of thousands of workers and is one of the most important pollinators on Earth.
• Common wasp 0.08 g The common wasp is the black-and-yellow visitor at your picnic table, and she is a hunter who carries flies and caterpillars home to her grubs.
• Common woodlouse 0.05 g The common woodlouse is not an insect at all but a crustacean, a close relative of crabs and shrimps that has moved onto dry land.
• Seven-spot ladybird 0.03 g The seven-spot ladybird is a small red beetle with three black dots on each wing case and a seventh spot sitting right where they meet.
• Zebra jumping spider 0.02 g The zebra jumping spider is a tiny black and white hunter that stalks across sunny walls and pounces on its prey instead of building a web.
• Green lacewing 0.01 g The green lacewing is a delicate insect with pale green wings so thin and clear that you can almost read a page through them.
• Termite 0 g Termites look like tiny pale ants, but they are not ants at all: their closest living relatives are the cockroaches.
• Black garden ant 0 g The black garden ant is one of the commonest insects in Europe, and a single nest can hold several thousand busy sisters.
• Asian tiger mosquito 0 g The Asian tiger mosquito is a small black mosquito with bright white stripes on its legs, and unlike most mosquitoes it bites in broad daylight.
• Lined seahorse The lined seahorse is a strange, slow-moving fish that swims upright and grips seagrass with its tail.
• Moon jellyfish The moon jellyfish is one of the most common jellyfish in the world, drifting through coastal seas on every continent.
• Blobfish The blobfish is a deep-sea fish from the cold water off Australia, living so far down that the pressure there is about a hundred times greater than at the surface.
• Firefly The firefly is not a fly at all but a small beetle that makes its own light in the tip of its body and flashes it after dark.
• Periodical cicada The periodical cicada spends seventeen years underground as a young insect and then climbs into the light for only a few weeks.
• Giant oarfish The giant oarfish is the longest bony fish in the sea, a silver ribbon with a red crest that can grow to eight metres.
• Luna moth The luna moth is a large pale green moth with long twisted tails on its hindwings that spin in flight and confuse hunting bats.