Explore Animal Locations
Who lives where?
Pick an animal to light up the places it lives, or choose a continent to meet its wildlife.
Each animal's map shows where scientific sources say it lives. The same places are written out on every animal's page.
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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.
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Adélie penguin
The Adélie penguin is a medium-sized penguin, about 70 centimeters tall, with a black back, a white front and a bright white ring around each eye. It breeds in summer on rocky, ice-free ground all around Antarctica, building nests of pebbles, and spends the winter far out at sea among the pack ice.
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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.
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African fish eagle
The African fish eagle is a big eagle of Africa's lakes, rivers and coasts, with a white head, chest and tail and a chestnut-brown body. It snatches fish from the surface of the water, and its loud, ringing call is one of the best-known sounds of Africa.
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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.
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African penguin
The African penguin is a penguin of warm, sunny coasts. It lives only in South Africa and Namibia, nests in burrows and under bushes, and hunts sardines and anchovies in the cold sea. Its numbers have fallen so far that it is now Critically Endangered, and people are working hard to protect it.
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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.
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Aldabra giant tortoise
The Aldabra giant tortoise is one of the largest land tortoises on Earth. Wild ones live on Aldabra Atoll, a ring of coral islands in the Indian Ocean, where more than 100,000 of them graze, browse and shape the land like elephants do in Africa. They can live for more than 100 years.
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Alligator gar
The alligator gar is one of the largest freshwater fish in North America. It has a broad snout lined with teeth, armor-like scales, and a swim bladder that works like a lung, so it can gulp air in warm, still water. It lives in the big rivers, swamps and bayous of the southern United States, Mexico and Central America.
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Alligator snapping turtle
The alligator snapping turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in the United States. It lies still on the bottom of rivers and lakes with its mouth open, wiggling a worm-like lure on its tongue to trick fish into swimming close. Its numbers have fallen, and it is now endangered.
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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.
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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.