Mammal

Dromedary Camel

A thirsty dromedary can drink over 100 litres of water in about 10 minutes, and can survive losing about a quarter of its body weight in water.

Dugong

The dugong is the only strictly marine plant-eating mammal, leaving tell-tale trails through seagrass meadows as it grazes.

Eastern Chipmunk

A chipmunk’s cheek pouches stretch to hold many seeds at once, letting it carry dozens of sunflower seeds or several acorns back to its burrow in one trip.

Elk (Wapiti)

A bull elk’s antlers can grow up to about 2.5 cm a day in summer, making them among the fastest-growing animal tissues.

Ethiopian Wolf

The Ethiopian wolf is the rarest wild dog in the world, with only about 500 adults left.

Eurasian Beaver

Eurasian beavers were hunted down to about 1,200 animals in the early 1900s; today there are well over a million across Europe and Asia.

Eurasian Lynx

A Eurasian lynx can kill prey three to four times its own weight, such as an adult red deer or reindeer.

Eurasian Otter

Otters mark their territories with droppings called spraints, which smell sweet, often compared to jasmine tea.

European Badger

Badgers live in underground ‘setts’ that can be used by the same family for many generations, some with dozens of entrances and hundreds of metres of tunnels.

European Bison

Every European bison alive today descends from just 12 animals kept in zoos after the species was hunted out of the wild by 1927.

European Hedgehog

A hedgehog has about 5,000–7,000 spines, and it can roll into a tight ball so that only spines face an attacker.

European Rabbit

The European rabbit is a pest across much of the world, yet it is Endangered in its native Spain and Portugal, where diseases have wiped out most of the population.

Fennec Fox

The fennec fox has the largest ears relative to body size of any member of the dog family, used both to shed heat and to hear prey moving underground.

Fin Whale

The fin whale is the second-largest animal on Earth, and so fast that sailors called it the ‘greyhound of the sea’.

Fishing Cat

The fishing cat dives into water to catch fish and has partly webbed front feet and a waterproof double-layered coat.

Flying Fox (Fruit Bat)

Flying foxes are among the world’s most important pollinators and seed dispersers, flying up to 50 km or more in a night and spreading seeds across whole landscapes.