All animals
Tap an animal to meet it: where it lives, what it eats, how it grows, and a narrated adventure with Olly.
442 to explore · page 4 of 10
-
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
Dromedary camel
The dromedary, or Arabian camel, is the one-humped camel of the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East and India. Its hump stores fat, not water, and its body is full of tricks for saving water. People tamed dromedaries thousands of years ago, and today none live truly wild, except a large feral population in Australia.
-
Watch
Animal
Dugong
The dugong is a large, slow marine mammal that grazes on seagrass meadows in warm, shallow coastal seas from East Africa to the western Pacific. It is a relative of the manatee and, surprisingly, more closely related to elephants than to cows. It has a whale-like tail, a big bristly snout and very good hearing.
-
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
3D
Animal
Eastern bluebird
The eastern bluebird is a small thrush of open fields and parks in eastern North America, south to Central America. Males are bright blue with a rusty orange chest. Bluebirds watch from wires and fence posts, flutter down to catch insects, and nest in tree holes and in nest boxes that people put up for them.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Eastern box turtle
The eastern box turtle is a small land turtle of eastern North America with a high, domed shell splashed with yellow and orange. A hinge on the bottom shell lets it close up almost completely, like a box with a lid. It eats mushrooms, berries, worms and slugs and can live for decades.
-
Watch
Animal
Eastern chipmunk
Eastern chipmunks are small ground squirrels with five dark stripes down their backs. They live in the woods, yards and parks of eastern North America, carry food in stretchy cheek pouches, and store it in underground burrows for the winter.
-
Watch
Animal
Eastern gorilla
The eastern gorilla is the gorilla of the misty mountains and forests of east-central Africa. It has two kinds: the shaggy mountain gorilla, whose numbers are slowly growing, and the big Grauer's gorilla, which has become much rarer.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Eastern gray squirrel
Eastern gray squirrels are bushy-tailed tree squirrels from the forests of eastern North America, and they are a common sight in parks and gardens. They bury nuts to eat later. People also took them to Britain and other countries; in Britain they cause problems for the native red squirrel.
-
Watch
Animal
Eastern grey kangaroo
The eastern grey kangaroo is a big, woolly gray kangaroo of eastern Australia and Tasmania. It hops on powerful back legs, balances with its long tail and grazes on grass in groups called mobs. Its joey is born weighing less than a gram and grows up in its mother's pouch.
-
Watch
Animal
Eastern tiger salamander
The eastern tiger salamander is one of North America's biggest land salamanders: dark and shiny, with yellow or olive blotches. It spends most of its life in burrows, then walks to fishless ponds on rainy nights to lay its eggs. Its babies live in water and breathe with feathery gills.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Eastern tiger swallowtail
The eastern tiger swallowtail is a large butterfly of eastern North America. Males are yellow with black tiger stripes, while many females are dark, which helps them look like a bad-tasting butterfly. Its caterpillars disguise themselves as bird droppings, then turn green with big fake eyes.
-
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
Emperor angelfish
The emperor angelfish is a striped reef fish from the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Adults are blue with bright yellow stripes, a yellow tail and a dark mask across the eyes. Young ones are dark blue with white and blue rings, and they change color as they grow. Emperor angelfish nibble sponges on the reef.
-
Watch
Animal
Emperor penguin
The emperor penguin is the largest penguin in the world. It lives around Antarctica, and it is the only animal that breeds during the dark, freezing Antarctic winter. Fathers keep the egg warm on their feet for about two months, huddled together against the storms.
-
Watch
Animal
Emperor scorpion
The emperor scorpion is one of the biggest scorpions in the world, up to about 20 centimeters long. It lives in the warm, humid forests of West Africa, where it digs burrows and hunts insects such as termites at night. Mothers give birth to live young and carry them on their backs. Like other scorpions, it glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
-
Watch
Animal
Emu
The emu is Australia's tallest native bird and the second-largest bird in the world, after the ostrich. It cannot fly, but it can sprint at about 48 kilometers an hour. Emus are famous fathers: the male sits on the eggs for about eight weeks without eating, then looks after the striped chicks.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Epaulette shark
The epaulette shark is a small, slender shark of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. It has a big black spot ringed with white above each front fin, and it can 'walk' along the reef, and even out of the water, by wriggling and pushing with its paddle-shaped fins. It can survive for a while in water with very little oxygen.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Ethiopian wolf
The Ethiopian wolf is a slender red wolf that lives only in the high mountains of Ethiopia. Wolf families share a territory, but each wolf hunts alone for rats and mole-rats. It is one of the rarest wild dogs on Earth.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Eurasian blue tit
The Eurasian blue tit is a small, colorful songbird of woods, parks and gardens across Europe and western Asia. It hangs upside down to find caterpillars, nests in holes and nest boxes, and can lay a very large clutch of eggs once a year, timed for when caterpillars are plentiful.
-
Watch
Animal
Eurasian eagle-owl
The Eurasian eagle-owl is one of the biggest owls in the world, with wings up to about 2 meters across, big orange eyes and two tall ear tufts. It lives across Europe and Asia, nests on rocky ledges and flies silently at night to catch rats, voles, hares and birds.
-
Watch
Animal
Eurasian lynx
The Eurasian lynx is the largest of the four kinds of lynx. It has black ear tufts, a ruff of fur around its face, a short black-tipped tail and big furry paws for snow. It hides in forests and ambushes deer such as roe deer, and it has returned to parts of Europe where it had disappeared.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
European bee-eater
The European bee-eater is one of the most colorful birds in Europe. It catches bees, dragonflies and other flying insects in midair, knocks out the stings on a branch, and digs a long tunnel in a sandy bank for its nest. Every autumn it flies to Africa for the winter.
-
Watch
Animal
European garden spider
The European garden spider is one of the best-known web-spinning spiders. It builds a round orb web, sits in the middle and waits to feel an insect land. Look for the white cross of spots on its back. It lives across Europe and Asia and was brought to North America, and it is harmless to people.
-
Watch
Animal
European hedgehog
European hedgehogs are spiny mammals of woods, farmland, parks and gardens in western and northern Europe. They snuffle around at night for bugs and worms, roll into a ball to protect themselves and hibernate through the winter. Their numbers are falling in many countries.
-
Watch
Animal
European herring gull
The European herring gull is a large, noisy gull of European coasts, with a pale gray back, pink legs and a yellow bill marked with a red spot. It eats almost anything, from crabs and fish to scraps people throw away, and many now nest on rooftops in towns. Even so, its numbers are falling in many places.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
European mantis
The European mantis is the best-known praying mantis. It sits very still with its spiky front legs folded, then snatches insects that come close. It is native to Europe, Africa and much of Asia, and people brought it to North America more than 100 years ago.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
European peacock butterfly
The European peacock butterfly has rusty-red wings with four big, colorful eyespots, like the spots on a peacock's tail. When a bird comes close, it flashes its eyespots and makes a hissing sound. Its black, spiny caterpillars live together on stinging nettles, and the adults sleep through the winter in hollow trees and sheds.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
European rabbit
The European rabbit is the wild rabbit that all pet and farm rabbits come from. It lives in groups in big underground tunnel homes called warrens. Its numbers have fallen in its first home in Spain, Portugal and France, but people have carried it to many other places, where it became a pest.
-
Watch
Animal
European robin
The European robin is a small songbird of Europe's woods, parks and gardens, famous for its orange-red breast. It sings almost all year round, even at night under streetlights, and it defends its patch fiercely. Young robins have no red breast at all: they are speckled with golden brown.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
European stag beetle
The European stag beetle is one of Europe's biggest beetles. Males have giant jaws shaped like a stag's antlers, which they use to wrestle other males. Stag beetles spend most of their lives underground as larvae, eating rotting wood for about four years, and live only a few weeks as adults.
-
Watch
Animal
Fennec fox
The fennec fox is the smallest member of the dog family. It lives in the Sahara and other deserts of North Africa, sleeps in cool burrows by day, and uses its enormous ears to hear insects moving under the sand at night.
-
Watch
Animal
Fire salamander
The fire salamander is a shiny black amphibian with bold yellow spots, found in cool, damp forests across much of Europe. Its colors warn predators that its skin makes bad-tasting toxins. Unlike most amphibians, the mother keeps her eggs inside her body and gives birth to live larvae in a stream.
-
Watch
Animal
Fishing cat
The fishing cat is a stocky, spotted wild cat of the wetlands of South and Southeast Asia. It is an excellent swimmer and diver, and fish are its main food. It lives in marshes, swamps, mangroves and along rivers, and it is Vulnerable because so many of these wetlands are being lost.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Flatback sea turtle
The flatback sea turtle is named for its flat, smooth shell. It stays in shallow coastal seas around northern Australia, eats soft sea animals such as sea cucumbers and jellyfish, and nests only on Australian beaches, where its big hatchlings dash for the waves at night.
-
Watch
Animal
Frilled lizard
The frilled lizard is a dragon lizard of the warm woodlands of northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It spends most of its life in trees, and when it is cornered it pops open a huge frill around its neck, opens its bright mouth and hisses, a bluff that makes it look much bigger than it is.
-
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
Gentoo penguin
The gentoo penguin is the penguin with the red-orange bill, orange feet and a white band across the top of its head. It lives on the Antarctic Peninsula and on islands around Antarctica, builds nests of stones, and usually lays two eggs. National Geographic says no other diving bird swims faster.
-
Watch
Animal
Gharial
The gharial is a crocodile relative with a long, skinny snout full of sharp teeth, perfect for snapping up fish. It lives in a few big rivers of northern India and Nepal, and it is one of the most threatened crocodilians on Earth.
-
Watch
Animal
Giant African millipede
The giant African millipede is one of the largest millipedes in the world, usually 16 to 28 centimeters long. It lives in the lowlands of East Africa, from Kenya to Mozambique, where it eats dead plants and helps turn them back into soil. Like all millipedes, it has two pairs of legs on most body rings and adds rings and legs as it grows.
-
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 clam
The giant clam, Tridacna gigas, is the largest clam alive. Its shell can grow more than a meter long. It sits on sunny coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and gets most of its food from tiny algae living in its body. It is Critically Endangered.
-
Watch
3D
Animal
Giant isopod
The giant isopod is a deep-sea relative of the pill bugs and sowbugs you find under garden stones, but it can grow to about 50 centimeters long. It crawls over the dark sea floor of the western Atlantic, cleaning up dead fish, squid and other food that sinks from above.
-
Watch
Animal
Giant oarfish
The giant oarfish is the longest bony fish in the world: it is usually about 3 meters long, and some have been reliably measured at 8 meters. Its silver, ribbon-shaped body has a red fin running all the way along its back. It lives in the open ocean, often hundreds of meters down, and drifts upright, head up, while it feeds on tiny krill.
-
Watch
Animal
Giant oceanic manta ray
The giant oceanic manta ray is the largest ray in the world, with wing-like fins that can stretch more than 6 meters from tip to tip. This gentle filter feeder funnels plankton into its wide mouth, and it has a single pup only every two to three years.