Curated category
Animal taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
- ChickenThe chicken began as a wild bird scratching for bamboo seeds in the forests of Southeast Asia. Today the global chicken population exceeds 26.5 billion, and…
- LionPanthera leo, the lion, holds a peculiar distinction among Earth's great predators: no other animal has been so thoroughly woven into the human story while…
- CattleCattle have the largest biomass of any animal species on Earth, roughly 400 million tonnes of living flesh. That places them ahead of Antarctic krill at 379…
- SheepSheep recognize and remember the faces of fifty other sheep for over two years. That finding, reported in 2001 by Kenneth M.
- HorseThe horse, Equus ferus caballus, travels on the same bones a human would use to walk on tiptoe. It carries an average weight of 500 kg on a single toe per…
- Red deerRed deer have been watching humans for at least 40,000 years. Cave walls across Europe bear their painted likeness, pressed into stone during the Upper…
- GoatThe goat was one of the first animals humans ever domesticated. The earliest remnants of domesticated goats, dating back 10,000 years, were found at Ganj…
- European badgerThe European badger has a jaw strong enough to amputate a human hand. That documented fact, buried in the scientific literature, hints at something most…
- Great white sharkCarcharodon carcharias, the great white shark, has 300 teeth arranged in rows like a conveyor belt, each one continuously replaced throughout its life.
- TigerThe tiger, Panthera tigris, holds a distinction that almost no other animal on earth can claim: in a 2004 online poll drawing more than 50,000 participants…
- WeaselWeasels belong to the genus Mustela, a group of small, fast, fiercely predatory mammals that have shared the world with humans for a very long time.
- WolfThe wolf, Canis lupus, is the largest wild member of the family Canidae alive today. A pack of fifteen can bring down an adult moose.
- MallardThe mallard, Anas platyrhynchos, is perhaps the most familiar bird on earth, yet its story is far stranger than a casual glance at a city pond would suggest.
- Brown bearUrsus arctos, the brown bear, can weigh up to 600 kg, stand nearly three meters tall, and run down a moose across crusted snow.
- Common quailThe common quail, Coturnix coturnix, is a bird that almost no one sees, yet almost everyone who has spent a summer morning near European farmland has heard.
- Eurasian eagle-owlThe Eurasian eagle-owl, known by science as Bubo bubo, is an animal large enough to interrupt a football match. In June 2007, one landed on the pitch of the…
- HaddockThe haddock carries a mark on its body that has been called the Devil's thumbprint. It is a dark oval blotch sitting just above the pectoral fin, and it is…
- PrimatePrimates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs 30 grams, to the eastern gorilla, which tips the scales at over 200 kilograms.
- CamelCamel bones unearthed in Timna Valley, Israel, dating to around 930 BC, set off a wave of headlines when archaeologists Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef…
- DogThe dog buried at Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany, lay beneath thick basalt blocks alongside a man and a woman, all three dusted with red hematite powder.
- American bisonThe American bison, Bison bison, once numbered an estimated 60 million individuals across North America. That figure is almost impossible to picture: a…
- Capra (genus)Capra is a genus of mammals, and the listener almost certainly knows one of its members better than any other animal in this story: the domestic goat.
- CougarPuma concolor holds a record no other animal can match: the Guinness record for the most names of any animal, with over 40 in English alone.
- DonkeyIn 2003, archaeologists excavating a tomb in Egypt made an unexpected discovery. Buried alongside what appeared to be one of the very first pharaohs were the…
- Golden eagleThe golden eagle, known to science as Aquila chrysaetos, holds a particular distinction among the world's birds of prey: it is the most widely distributed…
- HippopotamusThe hippopotamus - whose name comes from the Ancient Greek for "river horse" - is one of the stranger animals alive on Earth today.
- MammalA bumblebee bat measuring 30 to 40 millimeters and a blue whale stretching 30 meters belong to the same class. Both produce milk from mammary glands to feed…
- BirdA bee hummingbird measures just 5.5 centimetres. A common ostrich stands 2.8 metres tall. Both are birds, members of the class Aves, and that span hints at…
- European turtle doveThe European turtle dove has been singing over farmland and woodland edges for centuries, yet in the United Kingdom alone, its numbers have crashed by 93%…
- Beluga (sturgeon)The beluga sturgeon, Huso huso, holds a record that was set in 1827 in the Volga estuary: a single female weighing 1,571 kilograms and stretching 7.2 metres.
- HumanAny two humans, picked at random from anywhere on Earth, share over 99% of their genetic code. Yet from that thin margin of difference comes everything…
- Scarabaeus sacerCarl Linnaeus described Scarabaeus sacer in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae published in 1758. This publication serves as the starting point for all…