Animals of South America

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• Watch Animal Alpaca Alpacas are small, woolly members of the camel family from the high Andes Mountains of South America. People bred them from wild vicuñas thousands of years ago, mainly for their soft, warm fleece. Every alpaca lives with people.
• Watch 3D Animal Amazon milk frog The Amazon milk frog is a large tree frog that lives high in the treetops of the rainforest in northeastern South America. It is active at night, has big golden eyes, and lays its eggs in pools of rainwater trapped in holes in trees, where its tadpoles grow up.
• Watch Animal Amazon river dolphin The Amazon river dolphin, or boto, is the largest river dolphin. Many adults are pink. It lives only in fresh water, in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins of South America, and its bendy neck and big flippers let it twist between tree trunks in flooded forests as it hunts fish using sound.
• Watch Animal American crocodile The American crocodile is a large reptile of warm coasts and mangrove swamps, from the southern tip of Florida through Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America. It is shy, it basks in the sun to warm up, and mother crocodiles carry their babies to the water.
• Watch Animal American flamingo The American flamingo is a tall, bright pink wading bird of the Caribbean. It gets its color from pigments in the tiny water animals and algae it eats, and it feeds by filtering water through its bent bill with its head upside down. Flamingos live and nest in huge, noisy groups.
• Watch Animal Andean condor The Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world. With wings up to 3.2 meters across, it soars over the Andes Mountains of South America, barely flapping, as it searches for dead animals to eat. It is a vulture, nature's clean-up crew.
• Watch Animal Arapaima The arapaima is one of the biggest freshwater fish in the world, longer than a grown-up is tall. It lives in the warm, slow rivers and flooded lakes of the Amazon, and it must swim up to the surface to gulp air every few minutes.
• Watch Animal Arctic tern The Arctic tern is a small, graceful seabird with a black cap, a red bill and red legs. Every year it flies from its nesting grounds in the Arctic to the edge of the ice around Antarctica and back again. Scientists who tracked terns from Greenland and Iceland found that they flew an average of 70,900 kilometers in one year.
• Watch Animal Army ant Army ants hunt together in giant swarms and never build a permanent nest. This page is about the best-studied kind, Eciton burchellii, of Central and South American forests. Each night of its traveling phase the colony moves, and the workers link their legs to build a living camp around their queen and young.
• Watch 3D Animal Atlantic blue crab The Atlantic blue crab is a swimming crab with bright blue claws and back legs shaped like paddles. It lives along the Atlantic coast of the Americas, especially in bays where rivers meet the sea, like the Chesapeake Bay. A mother crab carries up to two million eggs in a spongy orange mass under her body.
• Watch 3D Animal Atlantic ghost crab The Atlantic ghost crab is a sand-colored crab of beaches along the Atlantic coast of the Americas. It is so pale that it almost disappears on the sand, like a ghost. It digs deep burrows, comes out mostly at night, and runs very fast on its long legs.
• Watch Animal Barn owl The barn owl is a pale, ghostly owl with a heart-shaped face that works like a dish to collect sound. It hunts mice and voles at night over fields and grassland, finding them by hearing alone if it has to. Barn owls live on every continent except Antarctica.
• Watch 3D Animal Barn swallow The barn swallow is a small, speedy bird with a glossy blue back, a reddish throat and a long, deeply forked tail. It catches insects in the air, builds cup-shaped mud nests on barns and bridges, and makes long migrations between the Northern Hemisphere, where it nests, and the Southern Hemisphere, where it spends the winter.
• Watch 3D Animal Blue-and-yellow macaw The blue-and-yellow macaw is a large parrot of South America and Panama. It is bright blue on top and golden yellow underneath, with a green forehead and a white face lined with black. It lives near swamps and rivers, cracks nuts with its strong black beak and stays with one mate for life.
• Watch Animal Blue-footed booby The blue-footed booby is a seabird of the tropical eastern Pacific, from Mexico to Peru and the Galápagos Islands. Its bright blue feet star in its courtship dance: birds with bluer feet are more likely to find a mate. It catches fish by diving into the sea from high in the air.
• Watch Animal Boa constrictor The boa constrictor is a large, heavy snake of South America. Of all the boas, it lives in the greatest variety of places, from rainforests to dry scrub and farms. It catches food by squeezing, it has no venom, and mothers give birth to live babies.
• Watch Animal Brown pelican The brown pelican is a large coastal bird of the Americas with an enormous bill and a stretchy throat pouch. It catches fish by diving head-first into the sea from high in the air. Brown pelicans almost disappeared from North America because of pesticides such as DDT, but after DDT was banned they made a full comeback.
• Watch 3D Animal Brown rat Brown rats are large rodents that came from East Asia and spread around the world with people, mainly on ships. They are smart, strong swimmers with a superb sense of smell. Wild rats can carry germs that make people sick, so they are best left alone.
• Watch Animal Brown-throated sloth The brown-throated sloth is a three-toed sloth of the rainforests of Central and South America. It eats leaves, saves energy by moving very slowly, and its shaggy fur can turn green with tiny algae that grow in it.
• Watch Animal Burrowing owl The burrowing owl is a small, sandy-brown owl with long legs and bright yellow eyes. Unlike most owls, it lives underground, in burrows dug by prairie dogs, ground squirrels or tortoises, or sometimes by the owls themselves. It lives in open grasslands and deserts from Canada to the tip of South America.
• Watch Animal Cane toad The cane toad is a large, warty toad that comes from the Amazon and Guianas of South America. People carried it to many warm places, including Australia in 1935, hoping it would eat beetles in sugarcane fields. It did not solve that problem, but it spread fast, and its poison harms native animals that try to eat it.
• Watch 3D Animal Capybara The capybara is the largest rodent alive, a giant cousin of the guinea pig. It lives in groups beside rivers, lakes and marshes in South America, grazes on grass and water plants, and dives into the water to stay cool and safe.
• Watch 3D Animal Cattle Cattle are large farm animals that people tamed from wild oxen long ago. They eat grass and digest it with a stomach that has four parts. Farmers around the world keep cattle for milk, meat and leather, and in some places oxen still pull plows and carts.
• Watch 3D Animal Chicken The chicken is a domesticated bird: people raise it on farms and in backyards all over the world for eggs and meat. Its wild ancestor is the red junglefowl of the forests of southern and Southeast Asia, and scientists think chickens were first domesticated about 3,500 years ago near rice fields in Southeast Asia.
• Watch Animal Christmas tree worm The Christmas tree worm is a small sea worm that lives in a tube inside living coral on Caribbean reefs. Only its two colorful, spiral crowns show. They catch tiny floating food and help it breathe, and the worm pulls them in with a flash if anything comes too close.
• Watch Animal Common basilisk The common basilisk is a lizard of riversides and streams from Nicaragua to Venezuela. It climbs trees, swims well and, when it is startled, can sprint upright across the surface of the water on its big back feet before it sinks and swims.
• Watch Animal Common blue morpho The common blue morpho is a large butterfly of the forests of Mexico, Central America and South America. The tops of its wings flash bright blue, but the undersides are brown with big eyespots, which camouflage it when it lands with its wings closed. Adults sip juice from rotting fruit instead of nectar.
• Watch 3D Animal Common starling The common starling, also called the European starling, is a glossy, spotted songbird from Europe, Asia and North Africa. It is a brilliant copycat that can imitate other birds and even car alarms, and in winter huge flocks swirl through the evening sky in shows called murmurations. People also carried starlings to North America, Australia and other places, where they now live in the wild.
• Watch Animal Common vampire bat Common vampire bats are small bats of warm parts of Mexico, Central and South America. They feed only on blood, mostly from livestock such as cattle, horses and pigs. They can walk, run and hop on the ground, and they share food with their roost mates.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic cat The domestic cat is one of the world's favorite pets. Cats live with people in homes, farms and towns in almost every country on Earth. Long ago they came from a small wildcat of the Middle East and Africa, and they still have the sharp senses and soft paws of a wild hunter.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic dog The domestic dog has lived with people for more than 12,000 years. Dogs came from gray wolves, and today there are more than 400 breeds, from tiny Chihuahuas to giant Irish wolfhounds. They live with people all over the world as pets, helpers and friends.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic goat Domestic goats are lively farm animals that came from a wild goat of Asia. They reach up to nibble leaves, twigs and weeds that other farm animals leave behind, and people keep them for milk, cheese, meat, wool and leather.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic pig Domestic pigs live with people on every continent except Antarctica. Their ancestor is the wild boar, which people began taming about 9,000 years ago. Pigs are among the smartest farm animals, with a super-sensitive snout for digging up food.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic sheep Domestic sheep are farm animals that people tamed in western Asia thousands of years ago. They graze on grass, digest it with a four-part stomach and stick together in flocks. People keep sheep for wool, meat, milk and leather.
• Watch 3D Animal Domestic silk moth The domestic silk moth is an insect people have kept for thousands of years. Its caterpillar, the silkworm, eats mulberry leaves and spins a cocoon from one long silk thread. People unwind those threads to make silk cloth. Silk moths now live only with people: the adults cannot even fly.
• Watch 3D Animal Donkey Donkeys are domesticated members of the horse family, bred from the African wild ass more than 6,000 years ago. With their long ears, sure feet and great strength, they have carried loads for people on rough, dry land ever since, and in many countries they still do that work today.
• Watch 3D Animal Dyeing poison frog The dyeing poison frog lives in the rainforests of Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and nearby Brazil. It comes in many dazzling patterns of blue, yellow, black and white, which warn predators about poison in its skin. Fathers carry their tadpoles on their backs to little pools of water.
• Watch Animal Electric eel The electric eel is a long, snake-shaped fish from South America that makes its own electricity. It uses weak pulses to find its way and talk, and strong ones to catch food. Despite its name, it is not a true eel at all.
• Watch Animal Garden snail The garden snail is a land snail with a brown-banded shell about 3 centimeters wide. It glides on a muscular foot over a carpet of slime, comes out mostly at night and after rain, and eats almost any garden plant. It first lived in western Europe and around the Mediterranean, but people have carried it around the world.
• Watch Animal Giant anteater The giant anteater is the biggest of the four kinds of anteater. It has no teeth at all, but its sticky tongue, about 60 centimeters long, flicks in and out up to 150 times a minute to slurp up ants and termites. Babies ride on their mothers' backs.
• Watch Animal Giant otter The giant otter is the longest otter in the world, up to about 1.8 meters from nose to tail. It lives in the rivers and lakes of South America in noisy family groups that hunt fish together by day. It is endangered, and people are working to protect it.
• Watch Animal Golden lion tamarin The golden lion tamarin is a small, bright orange monkey with a lion-like mane. It lives only in the Atlantic coastal forest of Brazil. In the 1970s only about 200 were left in the wild; thanks to decades of work, a census in 2022 and 2023 counted about 4,800.
• Watch 3D Animal Golden poison frog The golden poison frog is a small frog from one small area of rainforest in western Colombia. It comes in bright yellow, orange or mint green, and its skin holds a very strong poison that comes from the insects it eats. Scientists call it the most toxic of all frogs. It is endangered because its forest is being cleared.
• Watch 3D Animal Goldfish The goldfish is a small member of the carp family that people in China tamed centuries ago, by the time of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Wild goldfish are greenish-brown, but careful breeding has made gold, white, black and spotted pets with fancy fins.
• Watch Animal Goliath birdeater The Goliath birdeater is a giant tarantula from the rainforests of northern South America. With legs spreading about 28 centimeters and a weight of up to about 170 grams, it is described as the heaviest spider in the world. Despite its name, it eats mostly worms and insects, not birds.
• Watch 3D Animal Great blue heron The great blue heron is the largest heron in North America. It wades slowly through marshes, rivers and ponds, or stands as still as a statue, then strikes like lightning with its dagger-shaped bill to catch fish, frogs and even small mammals.
• Watch 3D Animal Great egret The great egret is a tall, all-white heron that lives in wetlands on every continent except Antarctica. It wades slowly through shallow water, waits, then strikes like lightning to catch fish. Once nearly wiped out in the United States by hunters who wanted its lacy feathers, it made a remarkable comeback.
• Watch Animal Great horned owl The great horned owl is a large, powerful owl with two long, earlike tufts of feathers on its head. It is one of the most common owls in North America and lives in almost any kind of semi-open place, from deserts and forests to city parks. It hunts mostly at night.