Animals That Start With S

Enhydra lutris

The sea otter is the heaviest member of the weasel family and one of the few mammals known to use tools, cracking open shellfish with rocks while floating on its back.

Hippocampus kuda

The seahorse is one of the ocean's most distinctive fish, with an upright, horse-like body shape unlike almost any other fish species. Rather than swimming powerfully, it drifts through seagrass beds and coral reefs, anchoring itself in place with a flexible, prehensile tail wrapped around plant stems or coral.

Coccinella septempunctata

The seven-spot ladybird is one of the most recognizable beetles in the world, named for the seven black spots that mark its glossy red wing covers. Both adults and larvae are voracious predators of aphids, making the species a natural form of pest control long valued by farmers and gardeners.

Panthera uncia

The snow leopard is an elusive big cat adapted to life in the high, cold mountains of Central and South Asia — including the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, and ranges across roughly a dozen countries from Afghanistan to Mongolia — so rarely seen in the wild that it's often called the 'ghost of the mountains'.

Casuarius casuarius

The southern cassowary is one of the largest and most dangerous birds in the world, a flightless giant native to the tropical rainforests of northern Australia and New Guinea. Despite its bulk, it is an excellent swimmer and can sprint through dense forest at considerable speed, using a large bony helmet-like casque atop its head to push through thick vegetation.

Stegosaurus stenops

Stegosaurus is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs ever discovered, instantly identifiable by the row of large, upright bony plates running along its back and the sharp spikes at the end of its tail. Despite its considerable size, it had a remarkably small, low-slung head with a brain roughly the size of a walnut relative to its huge body.