single-celled or acellular animal
protozoon
organism without a spinal column
invertebrate
organism with a spinal column
vertebrate
small, elongated, flexible, soft-bodied invertebrate usually with few or no obvious limbs or appendages
worm
small, segmented invertebrate with a head, thorax, and abdomen and three pairs of legs
insect
cold-blooded aquatic (saltwater or freshwater) vertebrate
fish
warm-blooded feathered vertebrate with wings
bird
invertebrate usually with a segmented body and jointed limbs (and including insects, arachnids, and crustaceans)
arthropod
invertebrate whose anterior segment has four pairs of legs and no antenna
arachnid
usually aquatic arthropod with an exoskeleton or shell
crustacean
animal that crawls on its belly or on small short legs
reptile
animal adapted to both land and water and zoologically between fish and reptiles
amphibian
animal with hair that nourishes young with milk
mammal, mammalian
animal in family Hominidae (or that of man)
hominid
animal in superfamily of primates (man and apes)
hominoid
hoofed, odd-toed, and usually horned herbivorous animal
ungulate
hoofed, even-toed, cud-chewing herbivorous animal
ruminant
animal with an abdominal pouch for the young
marsupial
animal feeding on refuse or carrion
scavenger
small and large members of the cat family
felines
squirrels and other relatively small gnawing animals
rodents
seals and other carnivorous, flippered aquatic animals
pinnipeds
organism living in an extreme hot or cold environment
extremophile
Size
very large, giant
large
greater
standard
medium, intermediate
miniature
lesser
small
very small, toy, teacup, pygmy
General Behavior
feral, wild, undomesticated
tame, domesticated
active
dormant
solitary, reclusive
gregarious, social
sedentary, settled
nomadic, migrating
Development
full-grown, mature
young, immature
Body
long-bodied
short-bodied
heavy-bodied, stocky, stubby, chunky
low-slung
sleek-bodied, slender
Areas of Body
above
below
on the back or top side, dorsal
on or along the side, lateral
on the stomach or underside, ventral
upperpart
underpart
front, anterior
hind, posterior
close together
widely spaced
joined
webbed
separated
near the attachment point, proximal
in the middle, mesial
at the end or extremity, distal, terminal
Parts of Body
well-developed
poorly developed
undeveloped or no longer used as a body part, vestigial
prominent, conspicuous
projecting, bulbous
distinguishing
sharply defined
protective
humped
armored
mantled (fold-like or hood-like)
elongate, elongated
broad
narrow
widening
tapering
flattened
convex
concave, dished (face)
sharp, pointed
blunt, rounded
angular, squarish, flattened
enlarged
reduced
erect
trailing
stiff
loose
legless
limbless
long-legged
short-legged
long-tailed
short-tailed
bushy-tailed
keeled (upright and ridge-like)
odd-toed
even-toed
opposable (thumb)
long-snouted
short-snouted
long-necked
short-necked
lidded
lidless
fixed (upper or lower jaw)
movable
long-eared
short-eared
branched horns
unbranched horns
with claws
without claws
smooth
wrinkled
light-furred
dark-furred
bushy, shaggy, luxuriant
fringed
barbed
glossy
dull
silky
velvety
cottony
leathery
light-plumaged
dark-plumaged
Coloration
plain
colorful
marked
unmarked
regular (markings)
irregular
uniform
variable
alternating
dense
scattered
tinged, tinted, tipped, spotted, blotched, calico
ringed
striped, banded, tabby
streaked, flecked, brindled
buff
tawny
dusky
grizzled
roan
tuxedo
GENERAL DESIGNATING ADJECTIVES
alligator
loricate
ant
formic
anteater
vermilingual
antelope
bovid, alcelaphine, bubaline
ape
australopithecine, anthropoid, pongid
armadillo
tolypeutine
ass or donkey
asinine
baboon
cynocephalous
badger
meline
barracuda
sphyraenoid, percesocine
bat
vespertilian
bear
ursine, arctoid
beaver
casteroid
bee
apian, apiarian
beetle
coleopterous, coleopteral
bird
avian, avine, volucrine, ornithic
bison
bisontine, bisonic
buffalo
buteonine
bull
bovine, taurine
butterfly
lepidopteral, lepidopteran, lepidopterous, papilionaceous, pierid, rhopalocerous
buzzard
buteonine
calf
vituline
camel
cameline
cat
feline, feliform
catfish
silurid, siluroid
centipede
myriapodous, myriapodan
chameleon
vermilingual
chipmunk
spermophiline
cobra
cobriform
cod
gadoid
cow
vaccine
crab
carcinomorphic, arthropodous, arthropodal, porcellanid
cricket
grilled, grilline
crocodile
loricate, crocodilian, emydosaurian
crow
corvine
cuckoo
cuculine
deer
cervine
dinosaur
dinosaurian, dinosauric
diving bird
urinatorial
dog
canine, cynoid
dolphin
delphin
donkey or ass
asinine
dove (also, pigeon and dodo)
columbine
dragonfly
odonatous, libelluloid
duck
anatine
dugong
sirenian
eagle
aquiline
earthworm
lumbricoid
eel
anguilliform
elephant
elephantine, pachydermoid, proboscidian
elk
alcine
falcon
falconine, falconoid
fish
ichthyoid, piscial, piscine
flamingo
phoenicopterous
flea
pulicid, pulicous
fly
muscid
fowl (chicken, turkeys, etc.)
gallinaceous, galline
fox
vulpine, vulpecular, alopecoid
frog
ranine, raniform, batrachian
giraffe
giraffine, camelopardine
goat
hircine, culiciform, capric, caprine
goose
anserine
gopher
spermophiline
gorilla
gorilloid, gorilline, gorillian
grasshopper (also, cricket)
orthopterous
gull
larine, laridine
hamster
cricetine
hare
leporine, lagomorphic
hawk
acciptrine
hedgehog
erinaceous
hen
gallinaceous
hermit crab
pagurian
heron
grallatory
herring
clupeoid
hippopotamus
hippopotamic
hog
suilline
horse
equine, caballine, chevaline
housefly
muscid, musciform
hyena
hyenic, hyaenic
insect
entomologic, insectaean, insectival
jellyfish
acalephan
kangaroo
macropodine, macropoid
king crab
limuloid
lamb
agnine
leech
hirudinoid, bdelloid
lemur
lemurine, lemuroid
leopard
pardine, feline
lion
leonine
lizard
lacertilian, lacertine, lacertian, saurian
lobster
crustacean, macrural, homarine, homaroid
lynx
lyncian
mackerel
scombrid, scombroid
manatee
sirenian, manatine, trichechine
mite, tick
acaridal, acarine
mole
talpine
mongoose
herpestine
monkey
simian, simioid, simious, pithecoid, pithecan
mosquito
culicine, culicid
moth
heterocerous
mouse
murine, murid
octopus
octopean, octopine, cephalopodous
ostrich
struthious, struthionine
otter
lutrine
owl
strigine
oyster
ostreoid, ostriform
panther
pantherine
parrot
psittacine, psittaceous
parrot fish
scaroid
peacock
pavonine
penguin
spheniscine, impennate
pig
porcine, suine
pigeon
peristeronic
poisonous snake
thanatophidian
porcupine
hystricoid, hystricine
porpoise
phocaenine
pouched animal
marsupial, didelphian
pronghorn
antilocaprid
python
pythonic
rabbit
cunicular
raccoon
procyanine
ram
arietine
rat
murine, murid
rattlesnake
crotaline
ray
batoid
reindeer
rangiferine
reptile
reptilian, reptiloid, herpetiform
rhinoceros
rhinocerotic, rhinocerine, rhinoceroid
rodent
glirine, gliriform, rodential
seacow
sirenian
seal
sphragistic, phocine, pinnepedian, otarine
shark
squaloid, squaliform, selachian
sheep
ovine
shrew
soricine, soricoid
shrimp
caridoid
skunk
mephitine
sloth
edentate
slug
limacine
snail
gastropodous
snake
ophidian, sinerous, anguine, anguineous, serpentine, anguiform
songbird
oscine
spider
arachnoid, araneiform
squirrel
sciuroid, sciurine, spermophiline
starfish
asteroidal
stork
ciconine, herodian, herodionine
swan
cygnine
tapeworm
taeniid, taenial
tarantula
theraphosid
tick, mite
acaridal, acarine
tiger
tigerish, tigrine, tigerine, feline
tortoise
testudinal
turtle
chelonian
viper
viperine
vulture
vulturine, vulturial
wading bird
grallatorial
walrus
pinniped
wasp
vespine
water buffalo
bubaline
weasel
musteline
whale
cetacean, cetaceous
wild boar
aprine
wolf
lupine
woodpecker
piciform, picine
worm
vermicular, vermiform, vermian
zebra
zebrine, hippotigrine
warm-blooded
endothermic, homoeothermic
cold-blooded
ectothermic, poikilothermic
active during daylight
diurnal
active at night
nocturnal
active at dawn or twilight
crepuscular
emitting light
bioluminescent
passing the winter in a lethargic and low-metabolic state
hibernating
passing the summer in a lethargic and low-metabolic state
aestivating
two-legged
bicrural
two-footed
biped, bipedal
four-footed
quadruped, quadrupedal, tetrapod, tetrapodal
many-footed
polyped, polypod, polypodous
having no feet
apodal, apodan, apodous
having handlike feet
pedimanous, pedimane
having arms
brachiate
two-handed
bimanous
having nails or claws
unguiculate
having feathered feet
plumiped, plumipede, braccate
web-footed
palmiped
capable of grasping
prehensile
capable of being extended
protractile, protrusile
capable of being drawn back
retractile
extended forward, as a mandible or antenna
porrect
scratching the ground for food
rasorial
having ears
aurated
having a tail
caudate
having no tail
anurous, acaudal
having a tail with colored bands
ring-tailed
having horns
corniculate
having no horns
acerous
having two teeth
bidentate
having no teeth
edentate
having two antennae or tentacles
dicerous
not adapted to flying
flightless
having wings
pennate, alate
having no wings
apterous
having feathers
plumaged, plumose
having a beak
rostrate, rhamphoid
curved downward (as a beak)
decurved
curved backward or inward
recurved
having scales
squamate, squamous, squamose
shedding or peeling off scales
desquamate
having a supportive external covering
exoskeletal
having a bony or horny shell-like case
loricate
shell or shell-like protective case
carapace
having gills
branchiate
having a thick hide
pachydermatous
having a rough skin with sharp points
muricate
having no hair
naked, hairless
having fur (pelage)
furred, furry
having shiny fur
sleek-furred
having soft hair
pilose
having bristles or spines
spiny, hispid, setaceous
covered with bristles or spines
echinate
covered with small bristles or spines
echinulate
divided into defined segments or sections
segmented
of two colors
bicolored
of three colors
tricolored
having stripes
striped, banded
having long markings or somewhat uneven stripes
streaked
having longitudinal stripes
vittate
having transverse or crosswise stripes
cross-banded, cross-barred
having spots of color (or black and white)
spotted, mottled, maculate, liturate
having small spots of color (or black and white)
flecked, freckled, speckled, specked, stippled, irrorate
having large and irregular spots
blotched
having black-and-white blotches
piebald
having patches of white and a color not black
skewbald
having a masklike facial marking or coloration
masked
having a visibly collar-like part or marking
collared, ruffed
having a tuft or ridgelike formation on the head or back
crested
having a fin along the back
fin-backed
having a highly developed sense of smell
macrosmatic
having a weakly developed sense of smell
microsmatic
having virtually no sense of smell
anosmatic
imitative in color or form
apatetic
warning off by colors or changes in the body
aposematic
serving to conceal
cryptic
imitating other things by using something as a covering
allocryptic
giving birth to young rather than producing eggs
viviparous
laying eggs
oviparous
laying eggs but retaining them until hatching time
ovoviviparous
widely distributed around the globe
cosmopolitan
dwelling in a particular region
endemic
dwelling in the same region or overlapping regions without interbreeding
sympatric
dwelling in different regions
allopatric
dwelling in the air
aerial
dwelling on the ground
terrestrial, terricolous
dwelling (insects) at or near the ground’s surface
epigeal
dwelling underground
subterranean, hypogeous
dwelling in caverns
cavernicolous
dwelling in burrows
cunicular
dwelling (insects) under a stone
lapidicolous
dwelling in a tube
tubicolous
dwelling in mud
limicolous
dwelling in dung
coprophilous, coprozoic, stercoricolous
dwelling in the desert
deserticolous
dwelling (or burrowing) in sand
arenicolous
dwelling in meadows or fields
practicolous, arvicoline
dwelling in woodlands
silvicolous
dwelling in trees
arboreal
dwelling in hedges
sepicolous
dwelling in mountains
montane
dwelling in rocks
petricolous, saxicolous, rupicolous
dwelling on land and in water
amphibian
dwelling in water
aquatic
dwelling in fresh water
freshwater
dwelling in the sea
oceanic, pelagic, marine, maricolous
dwelling in active or moving waters
lotic
dwelling in still or slow-moving waters
lentic
dwelling along the seacoast
littoral, orarian, limicoline
dwelling in rivers or streams
riverine, riparian, riparial, riparious, riparicolous
dwelling in marshes
palustrine, helobious, paludicolous, paludous
dwelling in estuaries
estuarine
dwelling in the deep sea
autopelagic
dwelling in deep water but coming at times to the surface
spanipelagic
dwelling on the bottom of a body of water or of the sea
benthic, benthonic
migrating from fresh water to the sea to spawn
catadromous
migrating from the sea to streams to spawn
anadromous
nest-building
nidificant
staying in the nest for a period after hatching
nidicolous
leaving the nest soon after hatching
nidifugous
dwelling in or sharing a nest with another animal
nidicolous
dwelling in the nest of another species
inquiline
helpless when hatched and needing parental care for a considerable time
altricial
independently active to a considerable degree after hatching
precocial
eating one type of food
monophagous
eating virtually everything
omnivorous
eating living organisms
biophagous
eating few types of food
stenophagous
eating a moderate variety of foods
polyphagous
eating a wide variety of foods
euryphagous, pantophagous
animal- and vegetable-eating
omnivorous, amphivorous
flesh-eating
carnivorous, amophagous, creophagous
feeding on other animals
predatory, predaceous, raptorial
eating its own kind
cannibalistic
eating human flesh
anthropophagous
eating horse flesh
equivorous
plant-eating
herbivorous, vegetarian
plant-eating (insects and lower animals)
phytophagous, phytivorous
fish-eating
piscivorous, ichthyophagous
fruit-eating
frugivorous, fructivorous
insect-eating
insectivorous
carrion-eating
necrophagous, scavenging
dung-eating
coprophagous
feeding on decomposing matter
saprophagous
grass-eating
graminivorous
grain-eating
granivorous
berry-eating
baccivorous
nut-eating
nucivorous
rice-eating
oryzivorous
leaf-eating
phyllophagous
worm-eating
vermivorous
bone-eating
ossivorous
wood-eating
hylophagous
egg-eating
oophagous
seed-eating
seminivorous
feeding on ants
myrmecophagous
feeding on flowers
anthophilous, anthophagous
capable of movement
motile
“sitting” or not capable of movement
sessile
walking with the body erect
orthograde
walking with the body virtually horizontal
pronograde
walking on the sole of the foot
plantigrade
walking with the back part of the foot raised
digitigrade
walking on hoofs
unguligrade
walking by fins or flippers
pinnigrade
walking backward
retrograde
moving sideways
laterigrade
creeping
reptant, repent
creeping like a worm
vermigrade
climbing
scansorial
wading
grallatorial
burrowing
fossorial
moving by swinging the arms
brachiating
slow-moving
tardigrade
In fact the koala is not a bear at all, but merely suggests one—a bear divested of danger, smaller, cuter, altogether a more predictable fellow. It has the slanted, beady eyes of a fearsome martinet, but they are rendered comical by bushy ears sprouting up like two enormous cowlicks. The koala’s mouth is a tight and stubborn slit, but its severity is wholly undone by what appears to be a black rubber nose. The complete effect suggests an attempt at an authoritative demeanor that has turned out rather less than one had hoped—a dour schoolteacher proceeding through the geography lesson, unaware that his toupee is all askew.
—JAMES SHREEVE, Nature: The Other Earthlings
The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,—the Ouzel or Water Thrush (Cinclus Mexicanus, Sw.). He is a singularly joyous and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail.
—JOHN MUIR, The Mountains of California
At no time since hominids first arose on Earth has Australia not been an island. Any human beings who arrived there must have come by sea, in large enough numbers to start a breeding population, after crossing sixty miles or more of open water without having any way of knowing that a convenient landfall awaited them.
—BILL BRYSON, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Just as surprised as I, he stood up. He must have construed the sounds of my advance to be those of another sheep or goat. His horns had made a complete curl and then some; they were thick, massive and bunched together like a high Roman helmet, and he himself was muscly and military, with a grave-looking nose. A squared-off, middle-aged, trophy-type ram, full of imposing professionalism, he was at the stage of life when rams sometimes stop herding and live as rogues.
—EDWARD HOAGLAND, Walking the Dead Diamond River
In the shed, the slick squirming balls are gone. In their places are new fluffy, downy balls. They almost look like chicks. Their eyes are still sealed shut, still thin black lines that look like closed mouths. But their mouths are open. They are wheezing and huffing and mewling in squeaks that would be barks. They are rolling against each other, tumbling one over the other to land against China’s side. She watches me. Skeetah closes the curtain.
—JESMYN WARD, Salvage the Bones
It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on a tripod of two froglike legs and a long thick tail, and its fore limbs, which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog’s do, carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of the creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a phosphorescent grey. And it stood there blinded by the light.
—H. G. WELLS, In the Abyss
One of the best known Chelodina species must be the Australian snake-neck, which, as its name implies, has a neck almost as long as the rest of its body (which may grow to a length of 15–20 cm). It is a rather plainly colored reptile, the head, neck, limbs, and carapace being a uniform olive-brown, while the plastron is dirty yellow. It has very noticeable yellow staring eyes with round pupils.
—JO COBB, Turtles and Terrapins
At first, I thought he just had heat exhaustion or something. I mean, it was a crazy-hot July day (102 degrees with 90 percent humidity), and plenty of people were falling over from heat exhaustion, so why not a little dog wearing a fur coat? I tried to give him some water, but he didn’t want any of that.
He was lying on his bed with red, watery, snotty eyes. He whimpered in pain. When I touched him, he yelped like crazy.
It was like his nerves were poking out three inches from his skin.
I figured he’d be okay with some rest, but then he started vomiting, and diarrhea blasted out of him, and he had these seizures where his little legs just kicked and kicked and kicked.
And sure, Oscar was only an adopted stray mutt, but he was the only living thing that I could depend on.
—SHERMAN ALEXIE, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The grizzly is set apart from other bears not only by its light-colored shaggy coat but by its high shoulder hump, formed by a mass of powerful muscles that drive the front legs. Its head is massive, its ears small and its forehead high—all of which combine to give its face a concave, or “dished,” profile.
—PETER FARB, The Land and the Wildlife of North America
In country like this there were probably animals, all kinds of animals, jungly things. Not lions or elephants, of course, but snakes, certainly, and even monkeys, perhaps—the kind that screamed at night—and small nocturnal creatures that looked like big cats or rats and frolicked through ruins of huts where people had recently lived.
—DEBORAH EISENBERG, “Across the Lake,” The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
Lo and behold, here in the creek was a silly-looking coot. It looked like a black and gray duck, but its head was smaller; its clunky white bill sloped straight from the curve of its skull like a cone from its base. I had read somewhere that coots were shy. They were liable to take umbrage at a footfall, skitter terrified along the water, and take to the air. But I wanted a good look. So when the coot tipped tail and dove, I raced towards it across the snow and hid behind a cedar trunk. As it popped up again its neck was as rigid and eyes as blank as a rubber duck’s in the bathtub.
—ANNIE DILLARD, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
His captor had been clearing grass for a new maize garden when he disturbed an adult serval. He found a single male kitten in a nest in the tall grass. It had a long, fluffy, soft coat—a pale sandy-brown color—very closely spotted over the dorsal surface. His eyes were open but he could not really see well. The little ears were already erect, very black, and with a dull, dirty-white crossbar.
—VIVIAN J. WILSON, Orphans of the Wild: An African Naturalist in Pursuit of a Dream
All but one of the goats were pygmies. These were small, about knee-height, and distinguishable at first mainly by their color. Spanky was black with a white patch on either side. (He looked as if he’d been spanked with hands dipped in white paint.) Pearl was all white, and her sister, Onyx, was all black. Their mother, Suzie, was salt-and-pepper.
—BEN DOLNICK, “Goodnight Moon,” Central Park: An Anthology (Andrew Blauner, ed.)
The Hawaiian monk seal has wiry whiskers and the deep, round eyes of an apologetic child. The animals will eat a variety of fish and shellfish, or turn over rocks for eel and octopus, then haul out on the beach and lie there most of the day, digesting. On the south side of Kauai one afternoon, I saw one sneeze in its sleep: its convex body shuddered, then spilled again over the sand the way a raw, boneless chicken breast will settle on a cutting board. The seals can grow to seven feet long and weigh 450 pounds.
—JON MOOALLEM, “Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?” New York Times Magazine, May 8, 2013
The golden hamster hardly ever climbs, and gnaws so little that he can be allowed to run freely about the room where he will do no appreciable damage. Besides this, this animal is externally the neatest little chap, with his fat head, his big eyes, peering so cannily into the world that they give the impression that he is much cleverer than he really is, and the gaily coloured markings of his gold, black and white coat. Then his movements are so comical that he is ever and again the source of friendly laughter when he comes hurrying, as though pushed along, on his little short legs, or when he suddenly stands upright, like a tiny pillar driven into the floor and, with stiffly pricked ears and bulging eyes, appears to be on the look-out for some imaginary danger.
—KONRAD LORENZ, King Solomon’s Ring
Though her ears are high, the rhinoceros makes no move at all, there is no twitch of her loose hide, no swell or raising of the ribs, which are outlined in darker gray on the barrel flanks, as if holding her breath might render her invisible. The tiny eyes are hidden in the bags of skin, and though her head is high, extended toward us, the great hump of the shoulders rises higher still, higher even than the tips of those coarse dusty horns that are worth more than their weight in gold in the Levant. Just once, the big ears give a twitch; otherwise she remains motionless, as the two oxpeckers attending her squall uneasily, and a zebra yaps nervously back in the trees.
—PETER MATTHIESSEN, Sand Rivers
Desert bighorns are blocky, long-necked ungulates, grayish brown in color, sometimes more gray than brown, or pale beige, or with a russet cast. Their noses are moist and their rumps are white. They eat dry, abrasive plants, digesting them with four-chambered stomachs and the help of protozoa and bacteria.
The five gaits of bighorn sheep reflect their mental state, from a pompous, show-offy walk to an exuberant trot down a near-vertical rock face or a twenty-five-mile-per-hour escape run.
—ELLEN MELOY, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
The smallest of the group is the mouse lemur, with a snub nose and large appealing eyes, that scampers through the thinnest twigs. The indri has a closely related nocturnal equivalent, the avahi, very similar in appearance and size except that its fur, instead of being black and white is grey and woolly. Oddest and most specialized of all is the aye-aye. Its body is about the size of that of an otter, it has black shaggy fur, a bushy tail and large membranous ears. One finger on each hand is enormously elongated and seemingly withered, so that it has become a bony articulated probe.
—DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, Life on Earth
Averaging perhaps twenty pounds, the wildcat seems to be a miniature cross between a tiger and a leopard, with a bit of mountain lion thrown in. Its rust-brown coat shows spots and flecks above and a suggestion of dark stripes below, blending into a white belly. Heavy lines on its wide-flaring cheek fur break up the outline of its face so it can see without being seen. A little tuft of hair on each ear serves as an antenna which is sensitive to sounds or air currents. Its whiskers, bedded in delicate nerves, may lie back—or reach out to determine if a certain opening will admit its body.
—LES LINE, The Audubon Wildlife Treasury
I have named her Maxi, short for Maxitail, as hers is rather long. She is a complex character. She is very grabby, but her grabbiness stems from fright. She shuts her eyes as she grabs and simultaneously covers them by bringing her tail up over her head to form long bangs. Frightened as she may be, however, she has demolished the screen; she cannot—or refuses to—understand that the number of nuts that issue from our house is not infinite. At the moment, she is the most troublesome squirrel we have encountered.
—GRACE MARMOR SPRUCH, Squirrels at My Window: Life with a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels
The alligator when full grown is a very large and terrible creature, and of prodigious strength, activity and swiftness in the water. I have seen them twenty feet in length, and some are supposed to be twenty-two or twenty-three feet. Their body is as large as that of a horse; their shape exactly resembles that of a lizard, except their tail, which is flat or cuneiform, being compressed on each side, and gradually diminishing from the abdomen to the extremity, which with the whole body is covered with horny plates or squammae, impenetrable. . . .
—WILLIAM BARTRAM, Bartram’s Travels
The bulky body of the Muskrat is about a foot long and is covered with two kinds of hair: a short beautiful undercoat of soft and silky brown fur and a long coat of coarser hair. Its stout naked tail—almost as long as its body—is vertically flattened to aid in propulsion and steering when the animal is swimming. Its hind feet are partially webbed as another aid to progress in the water.
—JOHN KIERAN, A Natural History of New York City
In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay smooth and rectilinear as the stones of ancient ruins and the water from their muzzles dripped and rang like water dripping in a well and in his sleep he dreamt of horses and the horses in his dream moved gravely among the tilted stones like horses come upon an antique site where some ordering of the world had failed and if anything had been written on the stones the weathers had taken it away again and the horses were wary and moved with great circumspection carrying in their blood as they did the recollection of this and other places where horses once had been and would be again.
—CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
Finally he was in the top of the tree, a hundred or so feet from the ground. Just above him was the little squirrel, more beautiful, more perfect, up close than it had looked from the ground. The fur of its back and sides was gray but touched, brushed over, with tones of yellowish red and reddish yellow, so that against the light it seemed surrounded with a small glow, and the fur of its underside was immaculately white. Its finest features were its large, dark eyes alight with intelligence and the graceful plume of its tail as long as its body.
—WENDELL BERRY, “Nothing Living Lives Alone,” The PEN O. Henry Prize Stories 2012
My first mountain beaver had gone head-first into a trap set at its burrow mouth by my cousin, Mary V., on her parents’ ranch above the Oregon coast. It was a grayish, unprepossessing-looking creature about a foot long, weighing two to five pounds. The appearance, to my five-year-old eyes, was grotesque: squinched slits where the eyes should be; crinkly, bare ears; no tail worthy of the name; toes splayed out exactly like those in illustrations of dinosaurs (but otherwise no similarity to the giant reptiles); four curving teeth stained as if from eons of conscientious tobacco chewing.
—IRVING PETITE, The Elderberry Tree
Despite being arboreal the gibbons of the subfamily Hylobatinae are the only monkeys that spontaneously adopt the bipedal stance when on the ground. Their walk is, however, rather odd and clumsy. The gibbons are also noteworthy for their exceptionally long arms and legs, especially the former, and for the absence of a tail.
—AUGUSTO TAGLIANTI, The World of Mammals
There is a mysterious quality about the beaver, one that conjures up racial memories of trolls and gnomes and “little people.” It isn’t just that the animal works magic and can dramatically transform its surroundings during the dark of a single night; its odd and lumpy shape is like that of no other creature. In fact, it looks like some kind of mythical beast put together out of a grab bag of parts belonging to other animals. Its front paws are five-fingered, raccoonlike, and able to manipulate all kinds of material with skill. Its hind feet are totally different from its front ones, big webbed paddles like those of a loon or a duck. Its body is similar to that of a woodchuck who has fattened up in anticipation of a long winter’s fast. Its tail might have been taken from a duckbilled platypus; it is flat and paddle-shaped with a surface that is beautifully etched, as if tooled by a skilled leather craftsman.
—HOPE RYDEN, Lily Pond: Four Years With a Family of Beavers
The diet of tree-shrews is largely insectivorous and partly frugivorous, but in fact they are omnivorous and will eat anything that is digestible.
—M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU, An Introduction to Physical Anthropology
Where the brown bear is broad-shouldered and dish-faced, the polar bear is narrow shouldered and Roman-nosed. His neck is longer, his head smaller. He stands taller than the brown bear but is less robust in the chest and generally of lighter build. The polar bear’s feet are larger and thickly furred between the pads. The toes are partially webbed, the blackish-brown claws sharper and smaller than the brown bear’s. It lacks the brown bear’s shoulder hump and more expressive face, with its prehensile lips, well suited to stripping bushes of their berries.
—BARRY LOPEZ, Arctic Dreams
Then there was the whirring noise of wings as large brown birds burst out of the willows and one bird flew only a little way and lit in the willows and with its crested head on one side looked down, bending the collar of feathers on his neck where the other birds were still thumping. The bird looking down from the red willow brush was beautiful, plump, heavy and looked so stupid with his head turned down and as Nick raised his rifle slowly, his sister whispered, “No, Nickie. Please no. We’ve got plenty.”
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, “The Last Good Country,” The Nick Adams Stories
The havtagai which, like domestic camels, have long lashes to shade their eyes from the sun’s glare, nostrils that can be closed against wind-driven sand, and two toes linked by pads that spread their weight over the shifting sand, differ from them in being uniformly sandy-colored, whereas domestic camels may also be dark brown, black, or even white. They differ also in their longer though fine-boned legs (lacking callosities) and small feet and pads that leave a footprint about half the size of a domestic camel’s, in the thinner texture of their coats and the absence of mane and beard, and in their humps, which are small pointed cones and invariably firm, in contrast to those of domestic camels, which vary in size and condition according to their owner’s health.
—RICHARD PERRY, Life in Desert and Plain
Back on dry land, another marvel of evolution would have made their tread appear to be considerably lighter than that of much smaller animals. The skeletal structure of their feet is angled in a way that has been compared to a platform shoe, so they walk on their toes, the weight spreading evenly toward the heel on a cushioning pad of fatty tissue. The pad is similar to the seismic tissue that whales and dolphins use to detect and receive sound waves in the sea and may enable elephants to detect vibrations in the ground. The footpads as well as the trunks contain Pacinian corpuscles, liquid capsules surrounded by layers of tissue and gel and containing nerve endings so sensitive to pressure as to enable these biggest of land beasts to detect the faintest of stirrings.
—MICHAEL DALY, Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P. T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison
Go to the meatmarket of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw?
—HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick
In the beginning were the howlers. They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten. It would start with just one: his forced, rhythmic groaning, like a saw blade. That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune. Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from other trees, farther down the beach, until the whole jungle filled with roaring trees.
—BARBARA KINGSOLVER, The Lacuna
The snow leopard, or ounce, is slightly smaller than the common leopard, and among the most attractive of all the great cats. In winter coat the fur, particularly on the lower parts, is unusually long, with thick wooly under-fur. This, in conjunction with the short muzzle, has the effect of making the head appear disproportionately small. The general ground colour is pale charcoal, faintly tinged with cream: the under parts up to the chin are milk white. The black rosettes are large, irregularly shaped, and randomly distributed. The markings on the head, along the spine, and on the upper part of the tail are well defined, but where the fur is long they are somewhat blurred: the pattern is more distinct in summer coat. The tail is long and densely furred, with large rosettes on the upper surface, white beneath, and black-tipped.
—NOEL SIMON AND PAUL GEROUDET, Last Survivors: The Natural History of Animals in Danger of Extinction
The cow has a smooth body and a face that looks much like that of a mouse, with a sharp-pointed nose and whiskers, but the bull is different. His nose has a large hump on it which hangs down over his mouth. His skin is rough and looks like wet earth that has dried in the sun and cracked. He is an ugly animal.
—SCOTT O’DELL, Island of the Blue Dolphins
Suddenly the water heaved and a round, shining, black thing like a cannon-ball came into sight. Then he saw eyes and mouth—a puffing mouth bearded with bubbles. More of the thing came up out of the water. It was gleaming black. Finally it splashed and wallowed to the shore and rose, steaming, on its hind legs—six or seven feet high and too thin for its height, like everything in Malacandra. It had a coat of thick black hair, lucid as seal-skin, very short legs with webbed feet, a broad beaver-like or fish-like tail, strong forelimbs with webbed claws or fingers, and some complication half-way up the belly which Ransom took to be its genitals. It was something like a penguin, something like an otter, something like a seal; the slenderness and flexibility of the body suggested a giant stoat. The great round head, heavily whiskered, was responsible for the suggestion of seal; but it was higher in the forehead than a seal’s and the mouth was smaller.
—C. S. LEWIS, Out of the Silent Planet
For the first time in his life, Paul got a clear view of a gorilla—an adult male with a tuft of silver hair on its back. It rose onto two legs when it saw the hunters and appeared to stand almost six feet tall. The forearms bulged with the promise of strength, its neck a massive pillar of solid muscle. The animal must have weighed nearly four hundred pounds.
—MONTE REEL, Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm
I am not a naturalist, nor have we on board a book of zoology, so the most I can do is to describe him. He is almost my height (nearly five feet ten inches) and appears to be sturdily built. Feet and hands are human in appearance except that they have a bulbous, skew, arthritic look common to monkeys. He is muscular and covered with fine reddish-brown hair. One can see the whiteness of his tendons when he stretches an arm or leg. I have mentioned the sharp, dazzling white teeth, set in rows like a trap, canine and pointed. His face is curiously delicate, and covered with orange hair leading to a snow-white crown of fur. My breath nearly failed when I looked into his eyes, for they are a bright, penetrating blue.
—MARK HELPRIN, “Letters from the Samantha,” Ellis Island and Other Stories
Thirty-five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened out along the ground. His ears were back and his only movement was a slight twitching up and down of his long, black-tufted tail. He had turned at bay as soon as he had reached this cover and he was sick with the wound through his full belly, and weakening with the wound through his lungs that brought a thin foamy red to his mouth each time he breathed. His flanks were wet and hot and flies were on the little openings the solid bullets had made in his tawny hide, and his big yellow eyes, narrowed with hate, looked straight ahead, only blinking when the pain came as he breathed, and his claws dug in the soft baked earth.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
She gazed down at me, her ears splayed open in the shape of Africa, her eyes kind and concerned. Then, lifting one huge foot, she began to feel me gently all over, barely touching me. Her great ears stood out at right angles to her huge head as she contemplated me lying helpless, merely inches from the tip of two long, sharp tusks.
—DAPHNE SHELDRICK, Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story
The eyes of the buffalo were glazing over, his tongue stuck out, and blood was streaming into the dry ground. Round and round the dead beast Clint walked, looking again and again at the great black head with its short shiny dark horns, the shaggy shoulders and breast, the tufts of hair down the forelegs.
—ZANE GREY, Fighting Caravans
Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her garden. It was normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked small in comparison with the ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red about the head and shoulders, passing to dirty white on the flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and large bloodshot eyes.
—SAKI, “The Stalled Ox,” The Complete Saki
An argument of great weight, and applicable in several other cases, is, that the above-specified breeds, though agreeing generally with the wild rock-pigeon in constitution, habits, voice, colouring, and in most parts of their structure, yet are certainly highly abnormal in other parts; we may look in vain through the whole great family of Columbidae for a beak like that of the English carrier, or that of the short-faced tumbler, or barb; for reversed feathers like those of the Jacobin; for a crop like that of the pouter; for tail-feathers like those of the fantail.
—CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species
It began with a helicopter landing right in front of us, a hundred feet from the D-20’s open door. A man in a reflective vest hustled out and hitched a fluorescent orange cable connected to the chopper’s undercarriage to the pile of black netting on the ground. Then out of the Quonset hut came a small ATV, towing a plywood flatbed. The tranquilized polar bear was on it, flat on its belly, positioned to face backward, so that the ATV didn’t blow exhaust in its face. Its fur was yellowing and crimped in places. Its huge muzzle was black with dirt.
—JON MOOALLEM, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story about Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
Fearsome lizards five or six feet long pounded over the ground and leaped lithely for high tree branches, as at home off the earth as on it; they were goannas. And there were many other lizards, smaller but some no less frightening, adorned with horny triceratopean ruffs about their necks, or with swollen, bright-blue tongues.
—COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH, The Thorn Birds
No coral snake this, with slim, tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant colors; but thick and blunt with lurid scales, blotched with black; also a broad, flat murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blue eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim’s blood in its veins and make it sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone, waiting for the sharp, inevitable stroke—so swift, at last, so long in coming.
—W. H. HUDSON, Green Mansions
The result, however, is a continuous sequence of 20 ft of colour film which seems to show a female Sasquatch, about 7 ft high and weighing an estimated 350 pounds. Her pendulous breasts are clearly visible, and she is covered with short shiny black hair, with the exception of the area just around her eyes. On the back of her head there is a kind of ridge (a bony crest observed on other Sasquatch, which also occurs, incidentally, on large female gorillas), and she has a very short neck, heavy back and shoulder muscles. The creature walked upright, swinging its arms, in a humanlike manner.
—MYRA SHACKLEY, Still Living?: Yeti, Sasquatch, and the Neanderthal Enigma
The straw-coloured fruit-bat, called abu regai or el hafash by the Baggara Arabs and ko-jok by the Nuba, is a very handsome creature for a bat. It is readily recognized by the orange-yellow ruff, brown back and blackish wings but otherwise straw-yellow body. Large specimens have a wingspan of nearly two and a half feet and a body about eight inches long. With tall pointed ears, long foxy face and large, dark, intelligent eyes it is an attractive animal.
—R. C. H. SWEENEY, Grappling with a Griffon
The tadpoles in the quiet bay of the brook are now far past the stage of inky black little wrigglers attached by their two little sticky pads to any stick or leaf, merely breathing through their gills, and lashing with their hair-fine cilia. A dark brown skin—really gold spots mottling the black—now proclaims the leopard frogs they will become.
—DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE, An Almanac for Moderns
Twelve years later it’s the length and weight of a full-grown alligator—six feet long head to tail and twenty-seven pounds—and no longer cute. Definitely not decorative. Its thick muscular body is covered with dark gray scales. A raised jagged dorsal fin runs from its head along its back and down the long tail. It’s a beast straight from the age of dinosaurs but to the Kid its appearance is as normal as his mother’s. Dewlaps drape in soft fans from its boney jaw and there are thin fringes of flesh on its clawed toes that stiffen and rise as if saluting him when the Kid approaches. It wears its eardrums on the outside of its head behind and below the eyes. On top of its head is a primitive third eye—a gray waferlike lens that keeps a lookout for overhead predators which are large birds mainly.
—RUSSELL BANKS, Lost Memory of Skin
Sometimes King Pellinore could be descried galloping over the purlieus after the Beast, or with the Beast after him if they happened to have got muddled up. Cully lost the vertical stripes of his first year’s plumage and became greyer, grimmer, madder, and distinguished by smart horizontal bars where the long stripes had been.
—T. H. WHITE, The Once and Future King
The cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus) may grow 6 feet long, though the average is about half that size. It is brown with indistinct black bands; its yellow belly may have dark markings as well, and a dark band runs from the eye to the corner of the mouth. It is distinguished from nonpoisonous water snakes by its deep spade-shaped head, light lips and white mouth.
—PHILIP KOPPER, The Wild Edge: Life and Lore of the Great Atlantic Beaches
Seeing this great gathering of chiru reminds me of the Mongolian gazelles on the eastern steppes of Mongolia, which I studied during the 1990s, work that is still continued by Kirk Olson. Over one million gazelles persist there, the largest such surviving population of a wild ungulate in Asia.
—GEORGE B. SCHALLER, Tibet Wild: A Naturalist’s Journeys on the Roof of the World
With renewed enthusiasm I dug on and was soon rewarded by the sight of the inhabitant—a gopher tortoise. Reaching into the tunnel, I grasped one stubby foreleg and tried to pull it out but found that it had apparently wedged itself so tightly in the narrow passage that I was forced to dig again. Eventually I dug around the specimen and hauled the struggling creature out. It was an adult, about eight inches across and slate-black in color. Its feet were elephant-like and bore blunt claws instead of toes, an ideal arrangement for digging. Its dome-like carapace was set with diamond-shaped plates in which the yearly growth rings or zones could clearly be discerned.
—ROSS E. HUTCHINS, Island of Adventure: A Naturalist Explores a Gulf Coast Wilderness
But this was not a beaver. Although its fur, like a beaver’s, was rich brown and glossy, I could see that the animal was smaller. Besides, I knew muskrats on sight, having trapped them when I was a boy. This one weighed about three pounds—they weigh from one and a half to four pounds—and it was about twenty inches long from the tip of its moist black nose to the end of its naked tail. The nine-inch tail, had I any doubt of what the animal was, identified it for me: a black, slender, thinner-than-high tail; not the wide, flat, boardlike tail of a beaver.
—JOHN K. TERRES, From Laurel Hill to Siler’s Bog: The Walking Adventures of a Naturalist
The whole family tree of Darwin’s finches is marked by this kind of eccentric specialization, and each species has a beak to go with it. Robert Bowman, an evolutionist who studied the finches before the Grants, once drew a chart comparing the birds’ beaks to different kinds of pliers. Cactus finches carry a heavy-duty lineman’s pliers. Other species carry analogues of the high-leverage diagonal pliers, the long chain-nose pliers, the parrot-head gripping pliers, the curved needle-nose pliers, and the straight needle-nose pliers.
—JONATHAN WEINER, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution
But hold it I did, and looked it over well, for it isn’t often I can close my hands on such an exquisite manikin. Its snippet of a buff nose came to a rounded point under high-perched eyes brightly edged in gold. One brown polka-dot marked the space between each two lines of its cross, and narrow bands of brown decorated its frantically springing thighs. The soft skin of its underparts was finely granular, beigey-white with a hint of greenish, and its wrinkled throat was lightly touched with yellow. No webbing at all between its long fingers and only a trace between its toes. Fingers and toes so delicate, so fine, and the climbing discs upon them infinitesimal but distinct. The whole adult peeper so minute it hid itself completely under the end of my thumb.
—MARY LEISTER, Wildlings
There is almost no way to explain a takin. Part this, part that, it looks as if it humbly adopted all the attributes that other goats and antelopes refused. Ponderous and unwieldy, its heavy body sits on fat, stubby legs, and is covered with a dingy, drab coat. Its horns look like a cross between those of the gnu and musk ox, and its face seems to have suffered a terrible accident, while the expression of its droopy lips makes one think it has been sucking a mixture of lemon and garlic.
—EDWARD W. CRONIN JR., The Arun: A Natural History of the World’s Deepest Valley
He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry as he scuttled through the long grass was: Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!
—RUDYARD KIPLING, The Jungle Book
Now—the date being October 21, 1945—I hold in the hollow of my hand the body of a little bird killed last night in its migration by flying against a railing atop the roof. I saw it lying in the sunlight on the tarred roof this morning, when I went up there, a creature hardly larger than a mouse, with flaming gold breast streaked with black, and gold elsewhere or russet blending into brown and black. It has a slender, pointed black bill. Its fragile, polished black feet simply hang from it, the toes grasping nothing. You would be surprised, holding it in your hand, at how soft and thick is its coat of feathers. The plumage is most of the bird, for the body is simply a small hard core at the center which you feel with your fingers pinching through the downy mass.
—LOUIS J. HALLE, Spring in Washington
Although very light birds, they are fairly large, with a wingspan of about seven feet; when sitting they cross their wings swallowlike over their backs. Although their feet are small, unwebbed, and useless for walking or swimming, frigates can perch with great ease on twigs and branches, either with two toes forward and two back, or three forward and one back. The beak is about four inches long, strongly hooked, and has a sharp tip. It is perfectly adapted for snatching fish from just below the surface, picking up floating organic debris, or lifting twigs from the ground or from another bird, while in full flight.
—IAN THORNTON, Darwin’s Islands: A Natural History of the Galápagos
For when Charley is groomed and clipped and washed he is as pleased with himself as is a man with a good tailor or a woman newly patinaed by a beauty parlor, all of whom can believe they are like that clear through. Charley’s combed columns of legs were noble things, his cap of silver blue fur was rakish, and he carried the pompon of his tail like the baton of a bandmaster. A wealth of combed and clipped mustache gave him the appearance and attitude of a French rake of the nineteenth century, and incidentally concealed his crooked front teeth.
—JOHN STEINBECK, Travels with Charley
The living examples of the group (Chimaera itself, Hydrolagus, Neoharriotta, Rhinochimaera, Harriotta, Callorhynchus) bear little resemblance to a typical shark, with their rat-like tails, long probing snouts, a hook-like copulatory organ on the forehead, skin flaps covering the gills, fan-shaped pectoral fins, a large spine in front of the dorsal fin, and crushing toothplates for pulverising the shells of the mollusks on which they feed—the upper jaw being solidly fused to the skull for additional strength.
—RODNEY STEEL, Sharks of the World
The shrew is a ferocious and deadly little animal. If it were larger—it is less than the size of a mouse—it would perhaps be one of the most feared animals in the world. It has a narrow, tapering snout; close, dark, sooty-velvet fur; and needle teeth. A poison gland in its mouth sends venom into its victim when it bites, and its prey dies quickly.
—VIRGINIA S. EIFERT, Journeys in Green Places: The Shores and Woods of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula
The pronghorns are distinctive in other ways. Both sexes may have horns, but the horns of the female never exceed the length of the ears. The horns are composed of fused hairs which cover a bony core. The horn sheath is shed annually. The rump patch, which resembles a huge powder puff when the hairs are erected, acts as an alarm device. When the white hairs are erected they reflect a large amount of light.
—DAVID F. COSTELLO, The Prairie World: Plants and Animals of the Grassland Sea
Hedgehogs are curious creatures. Small and covered in one-inch spines, they look like ambulatory toilet brushes without the handles, or like turtles, if turtles were a little bit taller and had prickles glued on their shells. But the pragmatic Hebridean islanders have no romantic notions about their spiny garden friends. The only time they generally notice them is when they see their flattened corpses on the roads. If it came down to a contest, they would tend to choose the birds over the hogs. “Rats with prickles,” is how one islander described hedgehogs to me.
—SARAH LYALL, The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
About half the bulk and weight of thar, chamois are natives of European and Asian alps. For their handsome appearance, golden brown in summer with dark facial stripe between the sharply pointed ears and muzzle, black legs and short upright horns curved backwards at the tops to form semicircular hooks, they were considered “royal” beasts, being also a challenge to hunt, good to eat, and providing buckskin.
—BETTY BROWNLIE AND RONALD LOCKLEY, The Secrets of Natural New Zealand
I have even mentioned White-footed mice. Yes, it is a kind of mouse, with—giving a splendid boost to the good sense of name-givers—white feet. It (this mouse) also has a white belly and a bi-colored tail, the under half of which is white all down its length. He eats whatever mice eat (which is not at all cheese, but native seeds, roots, and some small insects), and has white whiskers and a line of demarcation between the expansive white belly and his back which is a soft, fawn-colored brown (generally). He has large ears, two cutting incisors above and two below, and large coal-black eyes, and his name is Peromyscus. He is clean, noninfectious, industrious, and thoroughly American. And, as I say, he has white feet.
—RUSSELL PETERSON, Another View of the City: A Chronicle of a Heritage Besieged
We can let a population of Evolvabots loose in a simplified world, and that population will evolve under the combined effects of history, randomness, and selection. We know that we can use Evolvabots to test hypotheses about the evolution of early vertebrates.
—JOHN LONG, Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology
We had just climbed over a high dune, when we saw a strange-looking creature moving along the top of a ridge ahead of us. It appeared to be a rat and had very long back legs, and a long tail ending in a bushy tuft. Its body was upright and its small forelegs were tucked under its chin. It walked along on its hind legs like a kangaroo. Then it caught sight of us with its massive saucer eyes, or sensed our presence with its lengthy moustache hairs. Its great ears twitched and it turned its head to look at us for a brief moment.
—VICTOR HOWELLS, A Naturalist in Palestine
The smaller one was flattened against the ground, front legs tensed, ready to spring. Its mate circled slowly to the left, keeping its distance, until it was only possible to hold them both in her field of vision by letting her eyes flicker between them. In this way she saw them as a juddering accumulation of disjointed: the alien black gums, slack black lips rimmed by salt, a thread of saliva breaking, the fissures on a tongue that ran to smoothness along its curling edge, a yellow-red eye and eyeball muck spiking the fur, open sores on a foreleg, and, trapped in the V of an open mouth, deep in the hinge of the jaw, a little foam, to which her gaze kept returning. The dogs had brought with them their own cloud of flies.
—IAN MCEWAN, Black Dogs
Like all wildcats, the Arabian/North African wildcat has a “mackerel” striped tabby coat, varying in color from gray to brown—darkest in forest-dwelling animals, palest in those that live on the edges of deserts. It is generally larger and leaner than a typical domestic cat, and both its tail and legs are especially long; indeed, the front legs are so long that when it sits, its posture is characteristically upright, as depicted by the Ancient Egyptians in statues of the cat goddess Bast.
—JOHN BRADSHAW, Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet
On his knees, and with his chin level with the top of the table, Stephen watched the male mantis step cautiously towards the female mantis. She was a fine strapping green specimen, and she stood upright on her four back legs, her front pair dangling devoutly; from time to time a tremor caused her heavy body to oscillate over the thin suspending limbs, and each time the brown male shot back. He advanced lengthways, with his body parallel to the table-top, his long, toothed, predatory front legs stretching out tentatively and his antennae trained forwards: even in this strong light Stephen could see the curious inner glow of his big oval eyes.
—PATRICK O’BRIAN, Master and Commander
A magnificent Shire, all of eighteen hands with a noble head that he tossed proudly as he paced towards me. I appraised him with something like awe, taking in the swelling curve of the neck, the deep-chested body, the powerful limbs abundantly feathered above the massive feet.
—JAMES HERRIOT, Every Living Thing
Chipmunks, however, are smaller, less plump and have stripes along the sides of their heads, which the ground squirrel lacks. The stripes down the backs of both the golden-mantled ground squirrel and chipmunks serve to camouflage the animals from their numerous predators, blending with the irregular textures and broken patterns of light characteristic of the forest floor.
—STEPHEN WHITNEY, A Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Sierra Nevada
The dog climbed out through tall saturated grass, through dying pussy willows and stagnant silt, and onto a large flat red stone that still held the late-afternoon warmth from the sun. Here she lay panting, quivering. Her feet were tender and there was a new rip on her belly from the rocks. Wet, she showed her wolflike physique, the slender sneaky profile of her face, the alert damp fan of her tail. Her coloring was dark, her thick fur stippled, and her tongue mottled, like a chow’s, but her slender skeletal underpinnings were those of a wild creature, fox or coyote, something nocturnal and sly.
—ANTONYA NELSON, Bound
Black-chinned nectar hunters hovered now before the crimson of a mallow, now before the blue of a morning-glory. One rufous hummingbird perched on the same twig during periods of rest for three days in a row. According to the angle of the light, its tail appeared rufous or cinnamon-hued. Turning in the sun, a female Anna’s hummingbird, larger than a ruby-throat, flashed on and off like the beam of a lighthouse, a dazzling red spot that shone jewellike at its throat. Once Connie pointed out the slightly decurved bill and deeply forked tail of a Lucifer hummingbird.
—EDWIN WAY TEALE, Wandering through Winter
A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.
—ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Next to Mary a small gaunt man was sitting, rigid and erect in his chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin’s. But there was nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard’s disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, and dry.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY, Crome Yellow
The heart rates of animals as distantly related as fish and rodents also decrease, sometimes suddenly, when frightened. Loud, startling noises have been demonstrated to induce extremely slow heart rates in fawns and alligators as well as not-yet-born human infants. This heart slowing, called “fear” or “alarm” bradycardia, is a protective reflex that may keep the animal still and silent, making it less detectable to predators.
—BARBARA NATTERSON-HOROWITZ AND KATHRYN BOWERS, Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us about Health and the Science of Healing
A neck stretches long; legs drape behind. Wings curl forward, the length of a man. Spread like fingers, primaries tip the bird into the wind’s plane. The blood-red head bows and the wings sweep together, a cloaked priest giving benediction. Tail cups and belly buckles, surprised by the upsurge of ground. Legs kick out, their backward knees flapping like broken landing gear. Another bird plummets and stumbles forward, fighting for a spot in the packed staging ground along those few miles of water still clear and wide enough to pass as safe.
—RICHARD POWERS, The Echo Maker
Two kinds of geckoes live in these highlands. On the tree trunks lives the Leaf-tailed Gecko. In day-time he is a mere mottled green smudge as he lies flattened against a giant tree trunk and is virtually invisible. His fringed sides and broad tail do not even cast a tell-tale shadow and his huge lidless eyes are a maze of green and black squiggles which also match his surroundings. No bird or other predator has sight keen enough to detect him. As long as he does not move he is safe.
—STANLEY AND KAY BREEDEN, Wildlife of Eastern Australia
Tia and Tallulah watched the arrival of Bad Bull with great interest. He was a massive animal with two jaggedly broken tusks and a large V notch out of the bottom of his right ear. About 45 years old, he stood at least two feet taller than the medium-sized bulls and his head, particularly his forehead and the space between his tusks, was extraordinarily broad. His temporal glands, one on each side of his face, located midway between the eye and ear, were grotesquely swollen and secreting a copious, viscous fluid.
—CYNTHIA MOSS, Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family