U is a genuinely tricky letter — there are far fewer U animals than S or T animals, and some lists pad themselves out with

T stands for tiger — the biggest cat on Earth — but that is only the beginning. This letter also delivers a screaming marsupial from

S may be the busiest letter in the animal kingdom. It covers the slowest mammal (the sloth), some of the fastest swimmers (sharks and seals),

R is a letter full of familiar faces: rabbits in the backyard, raccoons at the trash can, robins on the lawn — and then some

Let’s be honest: Q is one of the hardest letters in the animal alphabet. There simply are not many animals whose common names begin with

P might be the most impressive letter in the whole animal alphabet. It gives us the panda and the penguin, the polar bear and the

The letter O is packed with animal celebrities: owls that can turn their heads three-quarters of the way around, octopuses with three hearts, orcas that

The letter N introduces some of the strangest and most wonderful animals on Earth. There is a whale with a unicorn horn, a little Australian

M is a monster letter for animal lovers: the largest deer on Earth, a fox on stilts, a bat that emerges by the millions, and

L belongs to the big cats and their look-alikes — lions, leopards, lynx, and a seal named after one of them — plus lemurs, llamas,

K is the letter of champions: the world’s largest lizard, a parrot that forgot how to fly, a ghost-white bear, and a deer small enough

J may be the alphabet’s trickiest animal letter, but it hides some greats: the strongest-jawed big cat, a hot-spring-soaking monkey, and the rarest rhino on

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

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

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

F is for fliers, gliders, and sprinters — plus a deer that helped decorate castle parks for a thousand years. Here are 16 real animals

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.

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

C might be the most crowded letter in the animal alphabet — cats big and small, deer with fangs, the fastest sprinter on Earth, and

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

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

Every color an animal wears comes from just two toolkits: pigments and structure. Pigments are colored chemicals — melanin makes blacks, browns, and golds, while

Gray is what you get when melanin is spread thin — a mix of dark pigment and pale, unpigmented bands along each hair. Many “gray”

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