I is a short letter with an outsized cast: cliff-climbing goats, a singing lemur, India’s armored rhino, and an extinct giant with the biggest antlers that ever grew. Here are 16 real animals that start with I, with fun facts
H is a letter of surprises: a bat with a moose-like face, a ‘laughing’ hunter smarter than some apes, and the river giant that may be Africa’s most dangerous large animal. Here are 18 real animals that start with H,
G is for gentle giants and expert diggers — the largest primate, the tallest animal, and a squad of ground-dwellers that spend half their lives underground. Here are 19 real animals that start with G, with fun facts and links
F is for fliers, gliders, and sprinters — plus a deer that helped decorate castle parks for a thousand years. Here are 16 real animals that start with F, with fun facts and links to the ones we cover in
E gives the animal alphabet its heavyweights and its featherweight: elephants, elk, and elephant seals share this letter with a shrew lighter than a coin. Here are 17 real animals that start with E, with fun facts and links to
D is the letter of the deer family, man’s best friend, and a few creatures stranger than fiction — including a wolf from the Ice Age that really existed. Here are 17 real animals that start with D, with fun
C might be the most crowded letter in the animal alphabet — cats big and small, deer with fangs, the fastest sprinter on Earth, and the world’s largest rodent. Here are 20 real animals that start with C, with fun
B brings the giants and the tinies: the biggest animal that has ever lived shares this letter with a bat lighter than a penny. Here are more than 20 real animals that start with B, with fun facts and links
The animal alphabet starts strong: the letter A gives us armored diggers, spotted deer, snow-white wolves, and a salamander that never grows up. Here are more than 20 real animals that start with A, from backyard favorites to some of
Every color an animal wears comes from just two toolkits: pigments and structure. Pigments are colored chemicals — melanin makes blacks, browns, and golds, while carotenoids from food make many reds, oranges, yellows, and pinks. Structural color is different: microscopic
Gray is what you get when melanin is spread thin — a mix of dark pigment and pale, unpigmented bands along each hair. Many “gray” mammals, like wolves and squirrels, are actually wearing hairs banded in black, white, and brown
Brown may be the most common coat color on Earth, and there is a simple reason: dirt, bark, and dead leaves are brown. An animal the color of its background is harder to see, whether it is hiding from predators
Pink animals are real, and they get their color in three very different ways. Some, like flamingos and spoonbills, turn pink from carotenoid pigments in the shrimp and algae they eat. Others, like the pink fairy armadillo and the Amazon
Golden fur and feathers sit right between yellow and brown, and nature makes that color two ways at once. In mammals, a warm form of melanin called pheomelanin paints coats reddish-gold. In birds and frogs, carotenoid pigments from food add
Most yellow animals get their color from food. Plants and algae make yellow-orange pigments called carotenoids, and animals that eat them — or eat the insects that eat them — can move those pigments into feathers, skin, and scales. That
In a world full of leaves, green is the ultimate camouflage — yet most green animals cannot actually make green pigment. Green frogs, lizards, and parrots usually combine two tricks: a layer of yellow pigment over skin or feather structures
Blue is the rarest common color in the animal kingdom, and it hides an amazing secret: almost no animal actually makes blue pigment. A cardinal is red because of red pigment in its feathers, but a blue jay is blue
Animals are white for very different reasons. Some, like polar bears and snowy owls, evolved pale coloring as camouflage against snow and ice. Others are white because of genetics: albino animals cannot make the pigment melanin at all, while leucistic
Black animals get their color from melanin, the same pigment that darkens human hair and skin. When an animal’s body produces a lot of melanin, its fur, feathers, or scales turn deep brown to jet black. Scientists call an unusually
A group of moose is usually just called a herd. But here’s the honest answer behind the trivia question: moose are among the least herd-forming animals in the entire deer family. Adult moose live alone for most of the year,
A female elk is called a cow. A male elk is a bull, and a baby elk is a calf. Elk share this cattle-style naming with the other giant members of the deer family, moose and caribou, while smaller deer
A baby caribou is called a calf — the same term used for the young of other large deer like moose and elk, and for baby reindeer, since caribou and reindeer are the same species. Caribou calves are usually born
Most deer give birth to one or two fawns per year, and for a healthy adult white-tailed doe, twins are actually the norm. First-time mothers usually have a single fawn, does in their prime on good food commonly have twins,
Wild elk typically live around 10 to 13 years, though cows in lightly hunted or protected herds can reach their late teens and occasionally their early twenties. Bulls generally live shorter lives than cows, often under 10 years in the