Mammals

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• Watch Animal Aardvark The aardvark is a shy night digger of African savannas. It sniffs out ant and termite nests, rips them open with its spade-like claws and laps up the insects with a sticky tongue about 30 centimeters long. Its name means 'earth pig' in Afrikaans.
• Watch Animal African buffalo The African buffalo is a huge, cow-like grazer with heavy, curving horns. It lives in herds that can number in the thousands, and a herd will rush to protect a calf in danger. It lives across much of Africa south of the Sahara, from open savannas to rainforests.
• Watch Animal African forest elephant The African forest elephant is a separate species from the bigger bush elephant. It lives in the rainforests of central and western Africa, eats lots of fruit and spreads the seeds of forest trees in its dung. It is Critically Endangered.
• Watch 3D Animal African wild dog The African wild dog, or painted dog, has a patchy coat unlike any other dog's, big round ears and only four toes on its front feet. It lives in close packs that hunt together, share food and care for the pups. It is endangered: the IUCN estimated in 2025 that only about 1,676 adults are left in the wild.
• 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 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 3D Animal American bison The American bison is the largest land animal in North America. Once tens of millions roamed the Great Plains, but by the 1890s fewer than a thousand were left. Careful protection, starting with a tiny herd in Yellowstone, brought bison back.
• Watch Animal American black bear The American black bear is the most common bear in North America. It lives mostly in forests, climbs trees with its short, curved claws, eats mainly plants, and spends the winter in a den. Not all black bears are black: some are brown, cinnamon, blue-gray or even white.
• Watch Animal Arabian oryx The Arabian oryx is a white desert antelope with long, straight horns and a black-and-white face. Hunting wiped it out in the wild, but animals kept in zoos were bred and returned to the deserts of Arabia. Today it lives wild again in five countries.
• Watch Animal Arctic fox The Arctic fox lives on the frozen tundra around the North Pole. Its coat changes color with the seasons, white or blue-gray in winter and brown or gray in summer, and it has short ears, a short nose and furry feet to keep the cold out. It eats lemmings, birds and leftovers from polar bears.
• Watch Animal Asian black bear The Asian black bear is a black bear with a cream crescent on its chest, shaped like a new moon. It lives in forests and mountains from Iran and Pakistan across the Himalayas and Southeast Asia to China, Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East. It eats mostly plants, especially fruit and nuts, and in cold places it sleeps through the winter.
• Watch 3D Animal Asian elephant The Asian elephant is the largest land animal in Asia. It is a little smaller than its African cousins, with smaller ears, a head shaped like two domes and a trunk with one finger-like tip. It lives in forests and grassy clearings in 13 countries of South and Southeast Asia.
• Watch Animal Aye-aye The aye-aye is a lemur from Madagascar, and the largest primate that is active at night. It taps on branches with its long, skinny middle finger, listens with its enormous ears for hidden grubs, then bites into the wood and hooks them out.
• Watch Animal Bactrian camel The Bactrian camel is the two-humped camel of Central Asia's cold deserts and steppes. People tamed it thousands of years ago, and it carried goods along the Silk Road. Its wild cousin, the wild camel, is a separate species that is endangered.
• Watch Animal Beluga whale The beluga whale is a small white whale of the Arctic. It has no fin on its back, a soft, round forehead it can change shape, and a neck that bends, and it makes so many whistles, chirps and clicks that sailors called it the canary of the sea.
• Watch Animal Black rhinoceros The black rhinoceros is the smaller of Africa's two rhinos. It has two horns and a pointed, hooked upper lip that it uses to pick leaves and twigs from bushes. It is Critically Endangered, but thanks to rangers and conservationists its numbers have been climbing again.
• Watch Animal Black-tailed prairie dog Black-tailed prairie dogs are sociable ground squirrels of North America's Great Plains. They dig huge underground towns, keep the grass short to watch for danger, and bark warnings to each other. Many other animals depend on their towns.
• Watch Animal Blue whale The blue whale is the largest animal ever to live on Earth, bigger than any dinosaur. It is a baleen whale: instead of teeth it has bristly plates that strain huge mouthfuls of seawater to catch krill. Blue whales live in every ocean except the Arctic, and their deep calls are among the loudest sounds made by any animal.
• Watch Animal Blue wildebeest The blue wildebeest, or gnu, is a big antelope with a box-like head, curved horns, a mane and a beard. It grazes the savannas of eastern and southern Africa, and in the Serengeti huge herds travel in a giant circle every year following the rains.
• Watch Animal Bobcat The bobcat is North America's most common wild cat, found from southern Canada across the United States to Mexico. It is bigger than a house cat, with a short tail, ear tufts and a spotted coat. It lives in forests, swamps, deserts and even some cities, and hunts mostly rabbits.
• Watch Animal Bonobo The bonobo is a great ape that looks a lot like a chimpanzee but is more slender, with a rounder head. It lives only in the rainforests south of the Congo River, in groups where females take the lead and squabbles rarely turn into fights.
• Watch 3D Animal Bornean orangutan The Bornean orangutan is a shaggy red great ape that spends almost all its life in the treetops of Borneo's rainforests. It eats mostly ripe fruit, builds a new leafy bed every night, and lives a quieter, more solitary life than other great apes.
• Watch 3D Animal Bowhead whale The bowhead whale is a giant baleen whale that spends its whole life in cold Arctic waters. Its enormous bow-shaped head can push through sea ice, its blubber is thicker than any other whale's, and some bowheads may live for more than 200 years.
• Watch 3D Animal Brown bear The brown bear lives in more places than any other bear, from European forests to the mountains of Asia and the rivers of Alaska. It eats almost anything, from berries to salmon, and spends the long winter asleep in a cozy den. Grizzly bears and Kodiak bears are brown bears too.
• 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 California sea lion The California sea lion is an 'eared seal' of the west coast of North America. It is clever, playful and very noisy, with a bark like a dog's. Unlike true seals, it has ear flaps and can turn its back flippers forward to walk on land. Its numbers have grown a lot since it was protected.
• Watch Animal Canada lynx The Canada lynx is a wild cat of the snowy northern forests of Canada and Alaska. Its huge, furry paws work like snowshoes, and it depends on one animal above all, the snowshoe hare. When hares are plentiful, lynx do well; when hares become scarce, lynx have a hard time too.
• 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 Animal Caracal The caracal is a sleek, reddish-gold wild cat of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to India. Its name comes from a Turkish word meaning "black ears", for its black-backed ears with long tufts. It hunts on the ground, but it can leap two meters or more into the air to catch birds.
• 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 Cheetah The cheetah is the fastest land animal. It can go from standing still to 72 kilometers per hour in about two and a half seconds, and its top speed is around 100 kilometers per hour, as fast as a car on a highway. Cheetahs live mostly in Africa, with a very small group in Iran.
• Watch Animal Clouded leopard The clouded leopard is a forest cat of mainland Southeast Asia and the Himalayan foothills. It is named for the cloud-shaped patches on its coat, and it is an amazing climber that can creep headfirst down a tree trunk. It is Vulnerable, and fewer of them are left each year.
• Watch 3D Animal Common bottlenose dolphin The common bottlenose dolphin is a fast, clever ocean mammal named for its short, thick snout. It finds fish with echoes, talks with whistles and clicks, and lives in warm and mild seas all around the world.
• Watch Animal Common hippopotamus The common hippopotamus is one of the biggest animals on land, yet it spends most of the day resting in rivers and lakes to keep cool. At night it walks out to graze, and its special skin makes its own sunscreen.
• Watch Animal Common raccoon The common raccoon is a clever night-time animal from North and Central America, famous for its black mask, ringed tail and nimble, hand-like front paws. It eats almost anything and lives in forests, wetlands, farms and even big cities. People have also brought raccoons to Europe and Japan, where they now live 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 Animal Common warthog Common warthogs are tough wild pigs of the African savanna. They kneel down to eat short grass, sleep in old aardvark burrows and run with their tails held straight up like little flags. The bumps on their faces are thick pads of skin.
• Watch Animal Common wombat The common wombat, or bare-nosed wombat, is a stocky, barrel-shaped marsupial of south-eastern Australia and Tasmania. It is one of the world's largest burrowing animals, spends about two thirds of its life underground and leaves cube-shaped poop to mark its patch.
• Watch 3D Animal Coyote The coyote is a clever, adaptable wild dog that lives from Alaska and Canada to Panama. It is smaller than a wolf and bigger than a fox. Coyotes eat mostly mice, voles and rabbits, howl and yip to keep in touch, and live everywhere from deserts and forests to city parks.
• Watch Animal Dingo The dingo is Australia's wild dog and the country's largest meat-eating mammal. People brought its ancestors to Australia about 4,000 years ago. It hunts rabbits, kangaroos and wallabies, howls rather than barks, and scientists still argue about whether it is its own species or a very old kind of dog.
• 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 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.