Green Iguana
Green iguanas can drop 12–15 metres from a tree onto the ground and survive unharmed.
North America
Grey Wolf
A wolf pack can travel over 50 km in a day, and dispersing young wolves have walked more than 1,000 km to find new territories.
Groundhog
During hibernation, a groundhog’s heart rate falls from about 80 beats a minute to as few as 5, and its body temperature drops to just a few degrees above freezing.
Harbor Seal
Harbor seals can follow the invisible water trail left by a fish using only their whiskers, even when the trail is over half a minute old.
Harpy Eagle
A harpy eagle’s rear talons can reach about 10–12 cm long, as long as a grizzly bear’s claws.
Hellbender
The hellbender breathes mostly through its skin, and its baggy, wrinkly folds increase the surface area for absorbing oxygen from the water.
Hercules Beetle
The Hercules beetle is one of the longest beetles in the world, and the male’s huge horn can be longer than its body.
Howler Monkey
Howler monkeys are among the loudest land animals: their roars can carry about 5 km through the forest.
Jaguar
Jaguars have the strongest bite relative to body size of any big cat, strong enough to pierce a turtle’s shell or a caiman’s skull.
Leafcutter Ant
Leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves they cut: they use them to grow a fungus garden, a form of farming that ants invented tens of millions of years before humans.
Magnificent Frigatebird
During courtship, male frigatebirds inflate a bright red throat pouch into a huge balloon to attract females.
Monarch Butterfly
Eastern monarchs fly up to around 4,000 km or more to a few mountain forests in central Mexico, a place none of them has ever seen before.
Mountain Goat
Mountain goats can climb slopes steeper than 60 degrees, thanks to hooves with hard outer rims and soft, grippy inner pads.
Musk Ox
Musk oxen defend their young by forming a circle, with adults facing outwards and calves sheltered in the middle.
Narwhal
The narwhal’s spiralling tusk is actually an enormous tooth that grows through its upper lip and may contain millions of nerve endings.
Nine-banded Armadillo
Nine-banded armadillos almost always give birth to identical quadruplets, all developing from a single fertilised egg.
North American Beaver
A beaver dam in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, is about 850 metres long, one of the largest structures ever built by an animal other than humans.
North American River Otter
River otters love to slide down muddy or snowy banks on their bellies, and they seem to do it just for fun.
Northern Cardinal
The northern cardinal is the state bird of seven US states, more than any other bird.
Northern Gannet
Gannets plunge into the sea from heights of 30–40 metres, hitting the water at about 85 km/h, protected by air sacs that cushion the impact.
Ocelot
In the 1960s and 1970s, about 200,000 ocelots were killed every year for the fur trade, before international bans allowed populations to recover.
Passenger Pigeon
The passenger pigeon was probably the most abundant bird in North America, with billions of birds, yet it was driven to extinction in just a few decades.
Periodical Cicada
Periodical cicadas spend 13 or 17 years underground, then emerge together in their millions within a few days.