A baby deer is a fawn, a baby bear is a cub, a baby kangaroo is a joey, a baby fox is a kit, and a baby goat is a kid — and that’s just the beginning. English has a wonderful, slightly chaotic collection of names for baby animals, built up over centuries of farming, hunting, and plain affection. This guide gathers the complete list in one big table, explains the logic behind the most common names, and answers the trickiest cases — like why a baby moose is a calf but a baby deer is not.
The big list of baby animal names
| Animal | Baby name | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Deer | Fawn | Elk and moose babies are calves, not fawns |
| Moose | Calf | Twins are common in good years |
| Elk | Calf | Born spotted, like fawns |
| Caribou / reindeer | Calf | Can walk within an hour of birth |
| Bear | Cub | Also lion, tiger, and leopard babies |
| Fox | Kit (or cub) | “Kit” is short for kitten |
| Rabbit | Kit or kitten | A wild baby rabbit is also called a kittle in old usage; hares differ |
| Hare | Leveret | Born furred and open-eyed, unlike rabbits |
| Kangaroo / koala | Joey | Any marsupial baby is a joey |
| Goat | Kid | Yes — that’s where the word for human kids comes from |
| Sheep | Lamb | A yearling is a hogget in farming terms |
| Cow | Calf | Also whale, elephant, giraffe, hippo, and rhino babies |
| Horse | Foal | A male foal is a colt; a female is a filly |
| Donkey | Foal | Also called a colt or filly by sex |
| Pig | Piglet | A litter can number a dozen or more |
| Dog / wolf / coyote | Pup (puppy) | Also seal, bat, shark, and rat babies |
| Cat | Kitten | Also the proper term for baby squirrels |
| Squirrel | Kit or kitten | Born pink, blind, and hairless |
| Bat | Pup | Usually a single pup per year |
| Owl | Owlet | Chick works for any baby bird |
| Eagle / hawk | Eaglet / eyas | “Eyas” is an old falconry word |
| Swan | Cygnet | From the Latin for swan, cygnus |
| Goose | Gosling | Follows the first large moving thing it sees |
| Duck | Duckling | Star of fairy tales |
| Chicken | Chick | A young hen is a pullet; a young rooster, a cockerel |
| Turkey | Poult | Guinea fowl babies are keets |
| Pigeon / dove | Squab | Stays in the nest unusually long |
| Frog / toad | Tadpole | Also called a polliwog |
| Fish | Fry (then fingerling) | Newly hatched fish are larvae, then fry |
| Eel | Elver | After a see-through stage called a glass eel |
| Echidna / platypus | Puggle | Arguably the best baby name in nature |
| Spider | Spiderling | Exactly what it sounds like |
Print that table and you’ll win most trivia nights. But the names make far more sense once you see the patterns underneath them.
Why so many babies are calves, cubs, kits, and pups
Most baby-animal names sort into families. Calf belongs to the big grazers and their look-alikes: cattle, of course, but also elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, whales, and the larger members of the deer family. That’s why a baby moose is a calf and so is a baby caribou — early English speakers filed the big deer with cattle, and the smaller, daintier deer separately. Cub covers the young of large carnivores: bears, lions, tigers, leopards, and hyenas. Kit — short for kitten — gathers the small furry mammals: foxes, rabbits, squirrels, ferrets, beavers, and skunks. And pup, from puppy, stretches surprisingly far: dogs and wolves, but also bats, seals, otters, rats, and even sharks.
Fawn stands apart — it comes from an old French word for “young animal” and settled onto deer specifically. A newborn whitetail fawn weighs 4–8 pounds, stands within half an hour, and spends its first weeks lying motionless between its mother’s visits; our guides cover what a baby deer is called at every age and what fawns eat as they grow. Marsupials got their own word too: joey covers kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, wombats, and opossums, whose babies crawl into a pouch the size of a jellybean and finish developing there.
The trick questions: deer, rabbits, and hares
A few cases trip everyone up. Within the deer family the line runs by size: whitetail, mule deer, roe deer, and other small and mid-sized species have fawns, while moose, elk, and caribou have calves. Red deer split the difference in tradition — their young are often called calves in Britain. There’s no biology in it, just centuries of habit, but wildlife agencies follow the same convention today.
Rabbits and hares are the other classic trap. Baby rabbits are kits or kittens, born blind, naked, and helpless in a fur-lined nest. Baby hares are leverets, born fully furred with eyes open, ready to lie camouflaged in the grass within hours. Different names for genuinely different childhoods. And one more for the road: a baby puffin is officially a puffling, which scientists really do write in papers.
Names for animal parents, too
Baby names come paired with parent names, and the deer family is the perfect example: a male deer is a buck, a female is a doe — while moose and elk switch to bull and cow, matching their calf-named babies. (A female moose is a cow, and a female elk is too.) The bull-and-cow pattern repeats across the big animals — elephants, whales, bison, giraffes — while birds generally run cock and hen, horses run stallion and mare, and goats and rabbits share buck and doe with the deer.
Born ready or born helpless: why baby animals differ so much
Behind the names hides a real biological divide. Precocial babies arrive ready to go: a caribou calf can follow the migrating herd within hours, a duckling swims on day one, and a leveret lies alone, furred and alert, from its first afternoon. Altricial babies arrive helpless: rabbit kits, squirrel kits, bear cubs, and songbird chicks are born blind and naked, banking on a safe nest or den while they finish developing. The pattern usually tracks danger — animals that give birth in the open, like the grazers with their calves and foals, need babies that can run, while animals with burrows and nests can afford a slow start. A black bear cub weighs well under a pound at birth — one three-hundredth of its mother — while a moose calf outweighs a whole litter of bear cubs on day one and can outrun a human within days.
The whitetail fawn splits the difference with one of nature’s best tricks: it can stand and walk almost immediately, but for its first weeks its actual defense is stillness. A fawn lies motionless in dappled cover between its mother’s brief nursing visits, nearly scent-free and spotted like sun through leaves, while the doe feeds at a distance so her own scent doesn’t give the hiding place away. That’s why a fawn found “abandoned” almost never is — mom is close, and our guide to whether a fawn needs help explains the rare real emergencies. Most deer are born as twins in good habitat, as we cover in how many fawns deer have.
How fast baby animals grow
The names are cute; the growth rates are jaw-dropping. A blue whale calf — a “calf” like any baby cow — gains up to about 200 pounds a day on milk so rich it’s nearly half fat, the fastest weight gain of any animal ever. A whitetail fawn doubles its birth weight in about two weeks and can outrun a human at a few days old. At the other extreme, a red kangaroo joey is born the size of a jellybean after about a month of pregnancy and takes the slow road: months in the pouch before its first hop. And a black bear cub, born tinier than a squirrel while its mother hibernates, nurses through the winter den and walks out in spring at ten times its birth weight — arguably the animal kingdom’s best glow-up.
Names even change as babies grow, especially where people once tracked animals closely. A fawn becomes a yearling at one year old; a foal becomes a yearling and then a colt or filly until adulthood; a chick becomes a pullet or cockerel before it’s ever a hen or rooster; and a piglet graduates to shoat and then hog in old farming speech. Wildlife biologists still lean on the age terms daily — knowing a deer is a fawn, a yearling, or an adult is often the first fact recorded about it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a baby deer called?
A fawn — for white-tailed deer, mule deer, and most other deer species. The three giants of the deer family break the rule: baby moose, elk, and caribou are called calves. If you remember “small deer have fawns, big deer have calves,” you’ll get it right every time.
What baby animal is called a joey?
Any marsupial baby: kangaroos most famously, but also koalas, wallabies, wombats, Tasmanian devils, and opossums. Marsupial babies are born astonishingly undeveloped — a red kangaroo joey is about the size of a jellybean at birth — and finish growing in the pouch.
Why is a baby goat called a kid?
“Kid” has meant a young goat in English since the Middle Ages, borrowed from Old Norse. Using it for human children started later as slang — and some grammar guides grumbled about it for centuries before giving up. So calling children “kids” is literally calling them baby goats, and goats had the word first.
What’s the rarest or weirdest baby animal name?
Strong contenders: puggle (baby echidna or platypus), puffling (baby puffin), elver (young eel), eyas (falconry chick), and squab (baby pigeon — yes, the same word as on restaurant menus). Puggle usually wins the vote, and deservedly.
Keep the animal words coming: learn what a group of deer is called and what a group of bats is called, meet every species in the Animals A–Z index, or start where the babies are cutest, with how to tell how old a baby deer is.
