14 animals containing the letter W — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are animals that contain the letter W anywhere in the name. Each of the 14 animals below opens to a full profile.
The world's most dangerous bird — a large, flightless ratite of the New Guinea and Australian rainforest, armed with a dagger-like inner toe claw 12 cm long; females are larger than males and leave all parental duties to the father; the brilliant blue-and-red neck wattles serve as status signals.
The world's most numerous large domesticated mammal — bred for milk, meat, leather, and labor across nearly every continent for over 10,000 years.
The giraffe-legged wolf of South American grasslands — an unmistakable canid with improbably long legs, reddish-orange fur, a black mane, and large ears; the maned wolf is not closely related to wolves or foxes, being the sole member of its genus; it is an omnivore that eats more fruit than meat, and the wolf-apple (lobeira fruit) forms a large part of its diet.
An Arctic whale with a single long spiraled tusk — actually a tooth — that gives it the popular name "unicorn of the sea," found only in the high Arctic.
The ghost of the mountains — a large cat of the high Himalayas and Central Asian ranges, rarely seen by humans; it has the longest tail relative to body size of any cat, which it wraps around itself like a scarf for warmth, and is known for its haunting, otherworldly call that sounds nothing like a roar.
A small to medium kangaroo relative — there's no clear biological distinction between kangaroo and wallaby; "wallaby" generally means smaller species — found across Australia, New Guinea, and as introduced populations in New Zealand, Britain, and Hawaii.
A massive Arctic marine mammal with iconic tusks — pinniped giant of the polar seas, weighing up to 2 tons, equipped with sensory whiskers that find clams in dark seabed mud.
A small, slender, and ferociously efficient carnivore — capable of killing prey larger than itself, with seasonal coat color changes from brown to white in cold climates, distributed across most of the Northern Hemisphere.
The largest animals ever to live on Earth — ocean-dwelling mammals descended from hoofed land ancestors, with the blue whale's heart the size of a small car and the sperm whale's brain the largest ever.
The ancestor of the domestic pig — a powerfully built, tusked omnivore with coarse grey-black bristles that has recolonised much of Europe and Asia; a major game animal, agricultural pest, and ecological engineer whose rooting transforms forest floors.
A large African bovid famous for the greatest wildlife spectacle on Earth — the annual Serengeti migration, in which over 1.5 million wildebeest cross crocodile-filled rivers in a coordinated mass movement.
The largest wild canid, a deeply social pack-hunter with the broadest historical range of any wild mammal except humans, and ancestor to the domestic dog.
The largest terrestrial member of the weasel family — a stocky, ferocious scavenger of northern forests and tundra with disproportionate strength, known to drive wolves and cougars off kills many times its own size.
A stocky, burrowing Australian marsupial famous for producing cube-shaped feces — the only animal in the world known to do so — and a backward-facing pouch that keeps soil out while digging.
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