Beastlypedia

Wild animal profiles. How they live, where they are found, and what makes each one strange. No care sheets, no difficulty ratings, just the animals.

A giant manta ray gliding through open blue water seen from below with sunlight above

Giant Manta Ray

Mobula birostris

Seven metres across, filter-feeding, and one of the few fish to pass a mirror test.

Ocean
A leafy sea dragon among kelp with leaf-shaped appendages along its gold and green body

Leafy Sea Dragon

Phycodurus eques

A relative of the seahorse pretending, very convincingly, to be seaweed.

Ocean
A bottlenose dolphin breaking the surface of open blue water with its beak and melon clear of the waterline

Bottlenose Dolphin

Tursiops truncatus

Every dolphin invents a name for itself and answers to it for life.

Ocean
A clownfish nestled among the tentacles of a sea anemone on a tropical reef

Clownfish

Amphiprion

Every clownfish is born male, and the largest one becomes female.

Ocean
A tiny transparent immortal jellyfish photographed against dark water, its red stomach visible through the bell

Immortal Jellyfish

Turritopsis dohrnii

It can run its own life cycle backwards, which is not the same as not dying.

Ocean
A seahorse gripping a strand of seagrass with its tail in clear shallow water

Seahorse

Hippocampus

The male gets pregnant, and it is a real pregnancy, not just carrying eggs.

Ocean
A shark cruising through open blue water seen from the side, with light rippling across its back

Sharks

Selachimorpha

Older than trees, older than Saturn’s rings, and barely a threat to anyone.

Ocean
An octopus on a rocky seabed with its arms curled beneath it and skin textured to match the rock

Octopus

Octopus vulgaris

Three hearts, blue blood, and most of its neurons outside its head.

Ocean
A peacock mantis shrimp at the mouth of its burrow on a reef, its green and orange shell and stalked eyes visible

Mantis Shrimp

Odontodactylus scyllarus

The famous eyes are real. The famous conclusion about them is wrong.

Ocean
A cuttlefish hovering above sand with its arms held forward and a rippling pattern across its skin

Cuttlefish

Sepia officinalis

It puts on the best colour display in the ocean and probably cannot see colour.

Ocean
A humpback whale breaching clear of the ocean surface with water streaming from its long pectoral fin

Humpback Whale

Megaptera novaeangliae

Every male in an ocean sings the same song, and the song changes together.

Ocean