This page includes all animals that start with the letter L that we plan to cover on Fact Animal. As we publish new content, each of these animals will be linked to their dedicated profile fact pages.
From L’Hoest’s monkey to lynx, read extraordinary facts about animals beginning with L.
L
L’Hoest’s monkey
Lamancha
La Plata dolphin
Labahoula
Labout’s Fairy Wrasse
Labradoodle
Labrador Retriever
Lace Bug
Lace Monitor
Laced Woodpecker
Lacewing
Lady Amherst’s pheasant
Ladyfish
Lagotto Romagnolo
Lake sturgeon
Lake Trout
Lake whitefish
Lakeland Terrier
Lakenfelder cattle
Lakenvelder chicken
LaMancha Goat
Lamb
Lammergeier
Lamprey
Lampshell
Lancashire Heeler
Lancetfish
Land Snail
Landseer Newfoundland
Langur
Lanternfish
Lanternfly
Lappet moth
Lappet-faced Vulture
Lapponian Herder
Lapwing
Larder Beetle
Laredo striped whiptail
Large-billed crow
Largehead anole
Largehead hairtail
Largemouth Bass
Lark
Lark sparrow
Latastia longicaudata
Laughing gull
Laughing Kookaburra
Lavender Albino Ball Python
Lawnmower Blenny
Lazarus Lizard
Lazuli bunting
Leach’s storm-petrel
Leaf beetle
Leaf insect
Leaf miner
Leaf-Nosed Bat
Leaf-scaled sea snake
Leaf-Tailed Gecko
Leaf-toed gecko
Leafcutter Ant
Leafcutter Bee
leaffooted bug
Leafhopper
Leafhopper assassin bug
Leafy Sea Dragon
Least chipmunk
Least Flycatcher
Least sandpiper
Least Weasel
Leatherback Sea Turtle
Leatherjacket
Leech
Leghorn Chicken
Leicester Longwool sheep
Leichhardt’s Grasshopper
Lemming
Lemon Blast Ball Python
Lemon Cuckoo Bumblebee
Lemon dove
Lemon Shark
Lemur
Leonberger
Leopard
Leopard Cat
Leopard Frog
Leopard Gecko
Leopard Lizard
Leopard Seal
Leopard Shark
Leopard Tortoise
Leptocephalus
Lesser Antillean iguana
Lesser earless lizard
Lesser flamingo
Lesser grain borer
Lesser Jacana
Lesser kestrel
Lesser Kudu
Lesser Long-Nosed Bat
Lesser Prairie Chicken
Lesser Scaup
Lesser Siren
Lesser Spotted Eagle
Lesser spotted woodpecker
Lesser stag beetle
Lesser boatman
Lesser Yellowlegs
Lesula
Lettuce Sea Slug
Levaillant’s cuckoo
Lhasa Apso
Lichtenstein’s sandgrouse
Liger
Lilac-breasted roller
Limousin cattle
Limpet
Limpkin
Lincoln sheep
Lineback Cattle
Lined day gecko
Lined seahorse
Lined snake
Linnet
Lion
Lionfish
Lion’s Mane Jellyfish
Lion Tamarin
Lion-tailed macaque
Lion’s Mane Jellyfish
Litter beetle
Litter skink
Little blue heron
Little Blue Penguin
Little Brown Bat
Little Bustard
Little Egret
Little file snake
Little Grebe
Little Owl
Little Penguin
Little skate
Little spotted kiwi
Little Tern
Liver Fluke
Livyatan
Lizard
Lizardfish
Llama
Lleyn sheep
Loach
Lobster
Locust
Loggerhead Kingbird
Loggerhead musk turtle
Loggerhead sea turtle
Loggerhead Shrike
Loggerhead sponge
Lone Star Tick
Long arm octopus
Long arm squid
Long barbel goatfish
Long snouted pipefish
Long-beaked common dolphin
Long-billed corella
Long-billed curlew
Long-billed dowitcher
Long-billed Thrasher
Long-billed vulture
Long-eared flying mouse
Long-eared hedgehog
Long-eared jerboa
Long-Eared Owl
Long-fingered bat
Long-finned pilot whale
Long-Haired Rottweiler
Long-horned orb-weaver spider
Long-horned woodchuck
Long-legged buzzard
Long-nosed armadillo
Long-nosed bandicoot
Long-nosed leopard lizard
Long-nosed potoroo
Long-nosed snake
Long-nosed tree snake
Long-snouted dolphin
Long-snouted seahorse
Long-tailed brush lizard
Long-tailed chinchilla
Long-tailed duck
Long-tailed macaque
Long-tailed Marmot
Long-tailed mealybug
Long-tailed planigale
Long-tailed pocket mouse
Long-tailed pygmy possum
Long-tailed shrew
Long-Tailed Tit
Long-tailed weasel
Long-toed salamander
Long-Winged Kite Spider
Longfin bannerfish (a type of fish)
Longfin Mako
Longfin tuna
Longhorn Beetle
Longnose Gar
Longnose lancetfish
Longnose sucker
Longspine squirrelfish
Longspur
Longtail tuna
Longtooth grouper
Loon
Lop rabbit
Lophelia coral
Lorikeet
Loris
Lory
Louisiana heron
Louisiana pine snake
Louse
Louvar
Lovebird
Lovebird (kept as a pet bird)
Lowchen
Lowland anoa
Lowland paca
Lowland streaked tenrec
Lowland tapir
Lungfish
Luminous hake
Lumpfish
Luna Moth
Lunkarya Guinea Pig
Lurcher
Lusitano horse
Lykoi
Lynx
Lynx spider
Lyrebird
Lystrosaurus
Please see our Animal A-Z list for animals that start with different letters.
Animal Names That Start With L
Read on for an overview of each of the animals listed above that begin with the letter L.
L’Hoest’s Monkey
The L’Hoest’s monkey, or mountain monkey, is an Old-World primate found in eh Congo Basin and surrounding forests. They grow up to around 6kg and have a characteristic hooked tail at the tip. They’re generally dark-furred with white cheeks.
Fun Fact: This monkey species is matriarchal, and will have troops of females containing a single transient male who stays with them for a few months to a couple of years.
Lamancha
The Lamancha is a dairy goat breed known for its very short ears and high milk production. They come in all goaty colours and have been bred since the ‘20s in the US. This breed is often referred to as the American Lamancha.
Fun Fact: Officially, they came in “gopher” types and “elf” types. The breeder also coined a morph called Cookie Ears, which pointy-tipped ears that curved back toward the head.
La Plata Dolphin
The La Plata dolphin, also known as the Franciscana dolphin, is a small river cetacean found in the coastal waters of South America. They have a very long beak and grow up to around 1.5 meters long.
Fun Fact: La Plata dolphins are the only member of their family, and the only river dolphin to tolerate saltwater and estuarine environments as well as rivers.
Labout’s Fairy Wrasse
Labout’s Fairy Wrasse is a bright red reef fish found in the Great Barrier Reef and New Caledonia. It has a purple belly and a long dorsal fin and is popular, yet expensive to buy in the aquarium pet trade.
Fun Fact: These fish are said to be great to keep because they’re peaceful and non-aggressive, but they love to jump, so they need to have a tight lid!
Labradoodle
The Labradoodle is a designer dog breed resulting from crossing Labrador Retrievers and Poodles. They have the hypoallergenic coats of their Poodle parents and the derpy friendliness of a lab.
Fun Fact: These were originally bred to be guide dogs for people with allergies. Both original dogs are highly intelligent so the labradoodle is easy to train.
Labrador Retriever
The Labrador Retriever is one of the most popular dog breeds, respected for its friendly and outgoing personality, sharp intelligence, and versatility in various roles. Abs were bred in Britain as sporting and hunting dogs.
Fun Fact: During the Vietnam war, Labradors were used as scouts, to help find dead and wounded soldiers.
Lace Bug
Lace bugs are a family of small hemipteran insects with around 2000 species. Like most bugs, they’re plant parasites and have flattened bodies with lacy, patterned wings that give them their name.
Fun Fact: These bugs may be pests but they have a highly diverse range of colours and shapes that make many species very pretty.
Lace Monitor
The Lace Monitor, sometimes known as the tree Goanna, is a large species of monitor lizard found in Australia. As the nickname suggests, it’s very comfortable climbing trees and grows up to 14kg.
Fun Fact: Lace Monitors are so good at climbing they can scale a brick wall using their long, powerful claws.
Laced Woodpecker
The Laced Woodpecker is a species of woodpecker from Southeast Asia. It has a similar colour scheme to (and shares a genus with) the European green woodpecker but is smaller and with a scruffier plumage.
Fun Fact: These are some of the most successful birds in Singapore, able to thrive in a place with almost no other wildlife.
Lacewing
Lacewings are delicate flying insects belonging named for their transparent wings with intricate vein patterns. They grow to just over a centimetre long and are usually green.
Fun Fact: Lacewings are often used in biological pest control due to their voracious appetite for aphids, making them valuable allies in agriculture and gardening.
Lady Amherst’s Pheasant
Lady Amherst’s pheasant is a galliform from China and Myanmar. The first specimen was sent to England by British naturalist Sarah Amherst, who must have been amazed to find it shared her name. Males are strikingly black, blue, white and orange, with a tail of up to 80cm.
Fun Fact: A feral population has set up in West Bedfordshire, and was thought to have gone extinct but witness reports keep emerging of a handful of individuals still in the area.
Ladybird beetle
The Ladybird, or Ladybug, is a widespread genus of mostly predatory beetles. They’re characteristically domed, usually spotted, and have chemical defences that seep out of their knees when disturbed.
Fun Fact: Ladybirds are excellent natural pest control, and even the larvae are formidable hunters of aphids, despite looking like cute little purple lizards.
Ladyfish
Ladyfish are a family of tropical fish from coastal waters. They grow up to a meter long, are elongated, and have lobed caudal fins.
Fun Fact: The larvae of these fish grow long and transparent, before reducing in size to become adults.
Lagotto Romagnolo
The Lagotto Romagnolo is a curly-haired Italian breed of dog, originally bred as a gundog. It’s usually brown, either solid or patchy, and stands about 50cm tall with a rounded head and thick limbs.
Fun Fact: The wetlands of the areas of this breed’s origin have long since been drained, and it’s now more commonly used to snuffle for truffles. This has led to its nickname, the Italian truffle dog.
Lake Sturgeon
Lake sturgeon is a large, temperate freshwater fish species found in lakes and rivers in North America. It has a positively prehistoric appearance, a long lifespan, and can reach to over 2.2 metres long.
Fun Fact: Lake sturgeon are long-lived giants, and females can last longer than 150 years if they can avoid humans.
Lake Trout
Lake trout are freshwater fish from the salmon family, native to North America. They can grow up to 1.3m long and weigh 46kg.
Fun Fact: This species is a low-productivity specialist. It lives in waters with very little nutrients and grows slowly.
Lake Whitefish
Lake whitefish are cold-water lake fish species found in North America. They have skinny heads and wide bodies and are often known as “humpbacks” for this reason. They’re typically grey-brown and grow up to about 2kg.
Fun Fact: These middle-tier predators are an important link in the trophic web, feeding on a plethora of invertebrates and small fish, and in turn being predated upon by larger animals in their ecosystem.
Lakeland Terrier
The Lakeland Terrier is a small breed of terrier dog originating in the Lake District of England. It has a square head, wiry coat, and lively temperament, and reaches about 8kg in weight.
Fun Fact: Lakeland Terriers were originally bred for hunting vermin, including rats and foxes, and they are surprisingly ferocious in this task for their size.
Lakenvelder Cattle
Lakenvelder cattle are a Germanic breed of domestic dairy cattle. They’re usually black or brown, with a thick white vertical band from behind the shoulder to in front of the hip.
Fun Fact: The Lakenvelder cow is the origin of the more modern, Dutch Belted cattle, which became popular in the US before Holstein-Friesians took over the market.
Lakenvelder Chicken
Lakenvelder chickens are a breed of domestic chickens from Germany. They’re said to descend from an Ancient Roman breed called Jerusalem Fowl. They have striking black-and-white plumage and are popular as egg layers.
Fun Fact: Lakenvelder chickens are prized for being exceptionally low maintenance for a modern breed. They are excellent foragers and relatively good parents for a chicken.
Lamb
Lamb refers to the meat of young sheep, or the young sheep itself and is legally defined as a sheep of less than 12 months old.
Fun Fact: Lambs are highly playful and prancing animals with an inquisitive nature and cute long ears.
Lammergeier
The Lammergeier, commonly known as the bearded vulture, is a large bird of prey found in mountainous regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. This huge raptor can have a wingspan of up to 3 meters and is named for its distinctive feathered “beard”.
Fun Fact: Lammergeiers have a unique feeding habit of dropping bones from heights to break them into smaller pieces, allowing them to access the nutritious marrow inside.
Lamprey
Lampreys are prehistoric jawless fish species found in freshwater and marine environments, known for their eel-like appearance, sucker-like mouth, and parasitic lifestyles.
Fun Fact: Lampreys are considered living fossils, with a lineage dating back over 360 million years, making them one of the oldest vertebrate groups on Earth.
Lampshell
Lampshells, also known as brachiopods, are marine invertebrates resembling clams but belonging to a totally distinct phylum. They have hinged shells and elongated bodies.
Fun Fact: Lampshells have been around since the Cambrian period, over 500 million years ago, and they are important fossils for understanding ancient marine ecosystems, yet, their taxonomy is still being teased apart.
Lancashire Heeler
The Lancashire Heeler is a medium-sized breed of herding dog originating from England. They have Rottweiler colouration in a corgi shape. known for its compact size, agility, and strong herding instincts.
Fun Fact: These little dogs are versatile working dogs and super friendly around strangers.
Lancetfish
The Lancetfish are a genus of deep-sea predatory fish found all over the world. They are elongated, with long, sail-like dorsal fins and big scary mouths. They can grow up to 2.2m long.
Fun Fact: The scientific name for the genus, Alepisaurus means “Scale-less lizard” and refers to the dragon-like appearance of this fish.
Land Snail
Land snails are terrestrial gastropod molluscs found in diverse habitats worldwide, known for their spiral shells, slow movements, and herbivorous diets.
Fun Fact: This is a polyphyletic group and includes at least ten convergent adaptations to terrestrial life from a marine gastropod ancestor.
Landseer Newfoundland
The Landseer, or Landseer Newfoundland, is a large, black and white Newfoundland, inspired by highly popular breeds in the Victorian period.
Fun Fact: Landseer Newfoundlands are named after the renowned British artist Sir Edwin Landseer, who often depicted these dogs in his paintings and the Canadian Newfoundland breed from which they originate.
Langur
Langurs are a diverse group of Old World monkeys found in Asia. They commonly have long tails, colourful fur, and semi-arboreal lives.
Fun Fact: Langurs are very athletic and can leap over five metres horizontally.
Lanternfish
Lanternfish are small marine fish species found in deep waters worldwide. They’re named for their bioluminescent organs used for camouflage, communication, and attracting prey.
Fun Fact: These small fish hide from the sun’s light at depths of up to 1500 meters, coming up in the night time to less than 100m below the surface.
Lanternfly
Lanternflies are a family of Hemipteran insects known for their bizarre appearance. They have elongated horns on their heads and are often brightly coloured.
Fun Fact: Lanternflies are named after a mistaken idea that the protrusions on their heads emit light at night time. This myth was perpetuated by taxonomists and artists who never bothered to confirm it.
Lappet
The Lappet is a species of moth found in Europe and Asia. It looks awfully like a little brown or orange leaf and is sometimes called a snout moth due to the protruding mouthparts in some species.
Fun Fact: Lappet moth caterpillars have decorative flaps on their legs that lend this insect its name.
Lappet-faced Vulture
The Lappet-faced Vulture, also known as the Nubian Vulture, is a large bird of prey found in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. This is a huge vulture, with potentially the longest wings of any in its range.
Fun Fact: Lappet-faced Vultures can hunt for themselves but they’re also good at just watching what other vultures are doing. Once another species finds a carcass, the larger lappet-faced vulture steals it.
Lapponian Herder
The Lapponian Herder is a medium-sized dog breed originating from Finland. It has a dark coat and pointy ears and was bred for herding reindeer.
Fun Fact: Lapponian Herders were traditionally used by the European tribespeople known as the Sami for herding reindeer, as they are great in cold weather and snowy conditions.
Lapwing
Lapwings are medium-sized wading birds belonging to the family Charadriidae. They’re ground nesters in the plover and dotterel group.
Fun Fact: Lapwings are known for their “peewit” calls, which are often heard during the breeding season and can sometimes sound like an electric slide whistle.
Larder Beetle
Larder beetles, sometimes also called skin beetles, are small beetles from the family Dermestidae, known for their scavenging behaviour on stored food products, dried animal remains, and organic materials.
Fun Fact: Larder beetles are important in forensic entomology, as their larvae can help determine the time of death or decomposition stages in forensic investigations.
Laredo Striped Whiptail
The Laredo Striped Whiptail is a species of lizard found in North and Central America, named for its long tail. It has 7 light stripes all the way down its body and grows to about 27cm long.
Fun Fact: These lizards are all-female, and reproduce through parthenogenesis, meaning they can produce offspring without mating with males.
Large-billed Crow
The Large-billed Crow, also known as the Jungle Crow, is a species of crow found in South and Southeast Asia, named for its giant schnoz, this is a highly adaptable crow that can be mistaken for a raven.
Fun Fact: Large-billed Crows are comfortable almost anywhere and can thrive in urban, suburban, and rural environments.
Largehead Anole
The Largehead Anole is a rare species of anole found in Haiti. Males of this species have comically large heads and look a bit like a nodding dashboard ornament.
Fun Fact: Haiti is about to cut down and permanently destroy its remaining 1% of forest cover, yet this little anole seems highly adaptable to tough conditions and should remain abundant in the villages.
Largehead Hairtail
The Largehead Hairtail is a fish species found in coastal waters of tropical and temperate regions. They have bizarre, elongated bodies with no recognisable tails and creepy fangs for teeth at the other end.
Fun Fact: Largehead Hairtails are often found in large groups and will readily eat one another if juveniles are present.
Largemouth Bass
The Largemouth Bass is a popular freshwater game fish native to Eastern North America. As the name suggests, it has a big mouth and is popular for singing to you when you walk past it on the wall in the bathroom.
Fun Fact: These dopey-looking fish are actually highly aggressive predators and can quickly become invasive when they’re introduced to other ecosystems.
Lark
Larks are passerines found all over the world, making up the family Alaudidae. There are over 100 species of medium-sized birds, mostly brown, some with a crest. They spend a lot of time on the ground.
Fun Fact: Larks are well known for having extremely complex songs, even for passerines.
Lark Sparrow
The Lark Sparrow is a medium-sized New World sparrow from North America and Northern Mexico. These are ground foragers and grow to about 17cm long.
Fun Fact: These little birds lay very pretty eggs. There are usually four, creamy-white eggs with black markings that look like a chocolate drizzle.
Laughing Gull
The Laughing Gull is a medium-sized gull species found in North and South America. They’re a black-headed gull with dark wings and a white belly and live in and around coastal marshes.
Fun Fact: Laughing Gulls are so named because of their great sense of humour. In the gull world, they’re the lovable idiots.
Laughing Kookaburra
The Laughing Kookaburra is a large and stocky kingfisher species native to Australia and New Guinea. They hunt mice and other small mammals, as well as invertebrates.
Fun Fact: The iconic laugh of this kingfisher is a popular stock sound for jungle audio tracks in movies, regardless of where they’re set.
Lavender Albino Python
The Lavender Albino Python is a colour morph of the Ball Python species, named for its lavender-coloured scales and lack of dark pigmentation. They have golden markings and red eyes and look a lot like a boiled sweet.
Fun Fact: Lavender Albino Ball Pythons are popular in the pet trade for their unique colouration but they are also said to be easy to look after.
Lawnmower Blenny
The Lawnmower Blenny, also known as the Jeweled Blenny, is a marine fish species found in coral reefs of Australasia and East Africa. They’re brown or orange with dark bars and have a mudskipper look about them.
Fun Fact: Lawnmower Blennies are named for their habit of grazing on algae-covered rocks, resembling a lawnmower in action as they scrape off algae with their teeth.
Lazarus Lizard
The Lazarus Lizard, also known as the Common Wall Lizard, is a species of lizard found in Europe. It’s small and slender and likes to live in rocky areas and places where there are crevices to hide and forage in.
Fun Fact: This lizard has bred so prolifically in the US that from 3 introduced individuals there is now a stable and naturalised population in Ohio.
Lazuli Bunting
The Lazuli Bunting is a small and very cute songbird species found in western North America. It has a blue head and back with a rusty throat and white belly. It grows to about 15cm long.
Fun Fact: Lazuli Buntings migrate relatively short distances, travelling from breeding grounds in North America to wintering areas in Arizona and Mexico, and they take these trips at night.
Leach’s Storm-Petrel
Leach’s Storm-Petrel is a small seabird species all over the world. It’s a small, dark sea bird at around 20cm long, and breeds in places few other animals can access
Fun Fact: These small birds are threatened with predation from the larger gulls so they do most of their breeding activity at night so as not to be bothered by them.
Leaf Beetle
Leaf Beetles are a family of beetles, and as you’d expect from a family of beetles, there are tens of thousands of species of them. This diverse family is known for its colourful members and their habit of feeding on plants.
Fun Fact: One species in this family sucks the juices from the roots of aquatic plants, breathing the oxygen it finds between the plant cells while it’s submerged down there.
Leaf Insect
Leaf Insects are a family of Phasmids, the order of insects that contains stick insects. They are exceptionally camouflaged animals from South and Southeast Asia.
Fun Fact: These guys are so good at camouflaging themselves, that some species have evolved ‘bite marks’ on their body’s edge to mimic caterpillar predation on a leaf.
Leaf Miner
Leaf Miners are insect larvae that tunnel and feed within plant leaves, creating distinctive patterns and damage visible on the leaf surfaces. They’re not a monophyletic group but can be from various lineages, mostly wasps, moths and sawflies.
Fun Fact: These insect miners stay between the layers in leaves to avoid predation and they can cause tremendous damage to plants throughout their time as larvae.
Leaf-Nosed Bat
Leaf-nosed bats are a family of bats from the Americas, named for their leaf-like nose structures, but with very little else in common. This is the most morphologically diverse family of mammals there is, with at least 180 species.
Fun Fact: The noses they’re named for are highly specialised signal manipulators for the bat’s echolocation. It’s not obvious how it works exactly but it seems to function as a baffle to focus a beam of sound from the nasal passage.
Leaf-Scaled Sea Snake
The Leaf-Scaled Sea Snake is a highly venomous marine Elapid snake found in tropical waters around Australia. They eat fish and can grow to about 80cm long.
Fun Fact: Males of this species have two penises, both autonomous and independently functioning. Mating involves using one in the traditional sense and using the other to hold onto the female as she swims about.
Leaf-Tailed Gecko
The Leaf-Tailed Geckos are a genus of highly camouflaged gecko species found in Madagascar. They have special flaps for even better plant mimicry and hunt insects at night.
Fun Fact: One species, the Satanic leaf-tailed gecko, has become popular on the internet for looking like an absolute demon, though many photos are manipulated.
Leaf-Toed Gecko
The Leaf-Toed Geckos are not a single line of geckos, rather they’re a variety of different gecko species from various genres with special pads on their toes that look like leaves. One family, the Phyllodactylidae, are also given this name but not all members have the adaptation.
Fun Fact: The leafy toe pads are covered in microscopic hairs that allow the geckos to climb vertical surfaces, including smooth glass or walls.
Leafcutter Ant
Leafcutter Ants, belonging to the genera Atta and Acromyrmex, are a group of over 40 ant species found in the Americas, named for their behaviour of cutting out pieces of leaf to take underground and cultivate a fungus that they eat.
Fun Fact: Leafcutter colonies can include up to 30 million individuals and span 600 square meters, making them some of the most complex social organisations on Earth.
Leafcutter Bee
Leafcutter Bees are a genus of Megachilid bee known for their leaf-cutting habits and role as pollinators in various ecosystems. Solitary females collect leaves to make their nests, in which they’ll lay an egg and plug each cell with cotton, honey and pollen.
Fun Fact: Females of this genus have pollen-collecting hairs on the downward-facing surface of their abdomens.
Leaf-footed Bug
Leaffooted bugs are bizarre-looking Hemipterans whose name comes from the inflated rear legs. Sometimes it’s the tibia, sometimes it’s the femur, but they look like the Synthol bros of the bug world.
Fun Fact: Despite looking ridiculous, these bugs can cause serious damage to food crops like tomatoes, peppers, and citrus fruits by piercing plant tissues and feeding on sap.
Leafhopper
Leafhoppers are small Hemipteran insect species known for their impressing pinging abilities, plant-sucking mouthparts, and diverse ecological roles. They come in all colours and are usually less than 1cm long.
Fun Fact: Leafhoppers legs aren’t just made for jumping, they also have a brush of hairs on them that help keep the insect covered in a waxy coating that keeps them waterproof.
Leafhopper Assassin Bug
The Leafhopper Assassin Bug is a predatory insect species known for preying on smaller insects, including leafhoppers, aphids, and caterpillars. They occupy North and Central America and are slender, fast bugs with scary predatory instincts.
Fun Fact: These small killers use a special sticky secretion to grab their prey and then inject them with a paralyzing toxin that begins to digest them from the inside out.
Leafy Sea Dragon
The Leafy Sea Dragon is a marine fish species and a relative of the seahorse found in Australia. They are covered in elaborate leaf-like appendages, camouflaging them in seaweed habitats.
Fun Fact: Leafy Sea Dragons, like seahorses, leave it to the male to hold and birth the young.
Least Chipmunk
The Least Chipmunk is a small rodent species found in North America and the smallest chipmunk species. It has a striped back, cheek pouches for storing food, and a very active, agile existence.
Fun Fact: These tiny rodents can run at up to 7.7km/h (4.8mph) in a straight line, which is pretty impressive, given their size.
Least Flycatcher
The Least Flycatcher is a cute little New World Flycatcher species that grows up to a maximum of about 14cm long and 10g. It is olive-grey and lighter on the belly and lives in Canada and the US.
Fun Fact: This little bird is sometimes called the chebecker, after the sound it makes. So if you hear a little bird shouting “Chebecker”, it’s probably one of these.
Least Sandpiper
The Least Sandpiper is a small shorebird species found in North American bogs and tundra. Like all sandpipers, it’s adorable, but this one has the added benefit of being even smaller. It has brownish plumage and forages along shorelines for insects and small crustaceans.
Fun Fact: These low-grit miniatures still manage to migrate all the way to the Caribbean when it gets too cold in Canada.
Least Weasel
The Least Weasel is a small carnivorous mustelid found in North America, Eurasia and North Africa. It is the smallest weasel but still a ferocious killer of animals as big as rabbits. It has brown fur with a white throat and belly.
Fun Fact: Least Weasels deserve their role in local folklore for being pound-for-pound some of the toughest and most terrifying predators. They can kill with a single powerful bite to the neck or skull.
Leatherback Sea Turtle
The Leatherback Sea Turtle is an enormous marine turtle species found in warm oceans worldwide. It’s the only member of the leathery-shelled group left and is the largest sea turtle in the world. They have inky-blue shells and can migrate over 6000km over the year.
Fun Fact: Leatherback Sea Turtles are around the sixth largest reptile, and the largest after crocodilians. They can weigh up to 1000kg and grow to 3m long.
Leatherjacket
Leatherjackets are a family of tropical and subtropical marine fish. They’re closely related to pufferfish and share their sort of surprised expression but are generally prettier, with dappled patterns of browns and creams. They have a strange, almost diamond-shaped body and can grow to over a meter long.
Fun Fact: Leatherjackets have very coarse, sandpapery skin, giving their nicknames.
Leghorn
The Leghorn is a breed of domestic chicken known for its prolific egg-laying abilities, hardiness, and Central Virginian accent. There are 18 colour morphs of this breed and they weigh up to about 3kg.
Fun Fact: Despite the Southern depiction in Loony Toons, this breed originates from Italy, and was originally known as the “Italian”.
Leicester Longwool Sheep
The Leicester Longwool Sheep is a heritage breed of domestic sheep respected for its long, curly, lustrous wool, gentle temperament, and toughness. It looks a lot like any other wool sheep.
Fun Fact: This sheep played a crucial role in the development of the English wool trade during the 18th and 19th centuries, but is now one of Britain’s rarest breeds, with only 500 registered.
Leichhardt’s Grasshopper
Leichhardt’s Grasshopper is a large species of pyrgomorph grasshopper native to Northern Australia. It has a narrow, pointed face like others in the pyrgomorph family, and is extremely brightly coloured in orange, red and blue.
Fun Fact: These animals certainly look toxic, but it remains to be seen whether they truly are, or they’re just pretending. Regardless, it seems to work, and there are no known vertebrate predators of this species.
Lemming
Lemmings are small tundra-specialist rodents found in Arctic and Subarctic regions. They grow to no more than 20cm long and have short, stubby tails.
Fun Fact: A myth about lemmings running themselves off cliffs is entirely inaccurate but spawned one of the best computer game series of the early ‘90s.
Lemon Blast Ball Python
The Lemon Blast Ball Python is another colour morph of the Ball Python species whose name sounds like a dessert. It has bright yellow and black patterns and is very popular in the pet trade.
Fun Fact: Lemon blasts are the last point before the naming scheme becomes very complicated. They’re a product of the pastel and pinstripe morphs, but once more genes are added, you get things like the lemon blast desert ghost and pastel pinstripe leopard.
Lemon Cuckoo Bumblebee
The Lemon Cuckoo Bumblebee is a species of bumblebee from North America, named for its yellow and black colour. The cuckoo part of the name refers to their parasitic nature.
Fun Fact: These bees are lethal social parasites and will march into another species’ colony, kill the larvae and queen, and lay their own eggs inside.
Lemon Dove
The Lemon Dove, also known as the cinnamon dove, is a species of pigeon found in Sub-Saharan Africa. They’re small, at up to 30cm long and 150g, and have pretty purple or orange plumage.
Fun Fact: These little doves are very widespread in montane forest ecosystems all over Africa. They tolerate altitudes from 100m to 3000m.
Lemon Shark
The Lemon Shark is a beautiful shark species found in subtropical waters. It grows up to 3 m long and 190kg.
Fun Fact: Like their close relatives the Bull sharks, these sharks sometimes swim into freshwater riverine systems.
Lemur
Lemurs are a group of small primates endemic to Madagascar and nearby islands. They’re diverse in appearance and behaviour and range from 30g to 9kg in weight.
Fun Fact: Lemurs have specialized scent glands on their wrists, which they use to mark their territories and communicate with other lemurs through smell. They also pee on themselves for the same purpose.
Leonberger
The Leonberger is a large dog breed from Germany. They’re large and muscular, but agile and gentle animals, loosely resembling a sporty St Bernard.
Fun Fact: These dogs are notoriously friendly and great family dogs but as with any giant breed, they need a lot of socialisation at an early age to be safe.
Leopard
The Leopard is a large, solitary and widely distributed cat species found in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It’s one of the Big Five, and recognisable for its rosette-shaped spots.
Fun Fact: Leopards occupy more habitats than any other big cat species. They can thrive in tundra, rainforest, steppe, savanna or mountain ecosystems.
Leopard Cat
The Leopard Cat is a small wild cat species found in Asia. It reaches about 4kg in weight and while some are spotted, various subspecies have differing patterns on their coats.
Fun Fact: These little cats don’t toy with the animals they eat like many small cats do. They kill swiftly and eat fast.
Leopard Frog
The Leopard Frogs are a group of frog species in the true frog genus Lithobates. They’re named for their spotted appearance and are found all over the Americas.
Fun Fact: Many leopard frogs look alike but can be told apart by their calls. Some make a “long snore”, others make a “rapid chuckle”, or a “short croak”.
Leopard Gecko
The Leopard Gecko is a popular species of gecko native to arid regions of Asia. They’re large geckos with distinctive bulbous tails that store fat.
Fun Fact: Leopard Geckos are commonly referred to as the earliest domesticated species of lizards, but there technically aren’t any domesticated lizards.
Leopard Lizard
The Leopard Lizards are a genus of long-tailed, generally spotted lizards found in North America. This is a small genus of three species, growing up to 15cm long and are agile, slender lizards.
Fun Fact: Leopard Lizards are fast runners but can also detach their tails if they’re grasped by predators, and grow new ones in their place.
Leopard Seal
The Leopard Seal is a huge seal species native to the cold waters of Antarctica. They are top predators with spotted fur, powerful jaws, and formidable penguin-hunting abilities.
Fun Fact: These seals vocalise underwater like cetaceans with growls and blast sounds to advertise fitness to mates and communicate with each other.
Leopard Shark
The Leopard Shark is a species of hound shark found in coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean. They’re small and harmless sharks with wide pectoral fins and long tails.
Fun Fact: Leopard Sharks are named for their spotted colouration but this begins as stripes in juveniles, leading people to once believe the young leopard sharks were a different species.
Leopard Tortoise
The Leopard Tortoise is a species of tortoise native to eastern and southern Africa. It’s named for its yellow and black colouration and lives in arid grasslands.
Fun Fact: Leopard Tortoises are the fourth-largest species of tortoise in the world, with adults reaching lengths of up to 45 cm and weights exceeding 18 kg.
Leptocephalus
Leptocephalus is a flattened, transparent, larval form of an eel found in various species of eels and related fishes. The name means “slim head” and they are almost entirely see-through, filled with jelly.
Fun Fact: These are strange and poorly understood stages of fish development. It’s not certain what they eat or how they grow without eating, but their development is very different from that of other fish larvae.
Lesser Antillean Iguana
The Lesser Antillean Iguana is a large species of arboreal iguana native to the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They’re handsome lizards, with dark bodies, very long claws and a pale head, often with a long dewlap under the chin.
Fun Fact: Despite looking like dragons, these large reptiles are entirely herbivorous and feed on foliage and fruits.
Lesser Earless Lizard
The Lesser Earless Lizard is a species of lizard found in southern North America and Mexico. They grow to about 13cm long and have plump bodies with long toes on their hind limbs.
Fun Fact: These lizards are active diurnal hunters, feeding on insects and other small invertebrates, and their long back legs give them remarkable speed in bursts.
Lesser Flamingo
The Lesser Flamingo is a small species of flamingo found in Africa, India, and the Middle East. Despite the name, it’s still around a metre tall and weighs about 3g.
Fun Fact: Juveniles are dark brown and gradually lose their natural colour, turning pale. The algae they feed on then give them a pink tint.
Lesser Grain Borer
The Lesser Grain Borer is the single species in the genus Rhyzopertha. It’s a small beetle, no more than 3mm long, brown, with a prominent thorax covering part of its head.
Fun Fact: These tiny beetles can fly over 5km in a single bout.
Lesser Jacana
The Lesser Jacana is a small species of African wader. It’s around 15cm tall and easily traverses aquatic habitats by walking on the leafy foliage that floats on the water.
Fun Fact: Unlike all the other Jacanas who are polyandrous, the lesser Jacana sticks to more traditional roles with the females looking after the young.
Lesser Kestrel
The Lesser Kestrel is a small falcon with blue-grey wings and head in males and speckled brown plumage in females. They’re found in Europe, Asia, and Africa and eat insects, birds and small rodents.
Fun Fact: The name and appearance suggest this is a kestrel species, but it’s not very closely related to other kestrels.
Lesser Kudu
The Lesser Kudu is a medium-sized species of antelope from eastern Africa. It’s generally grey-blue and has spiral horns, stripes, and long legs with a powerful build.
Fun Fact: These antelope have such excellent camouflage that it has protected the species from the brunt of human over-exploitation.
Lesser Long-Nosed Bat
The lesser long-nosed Bat is a species of bat from Central and North America. It’s quite a small bat, at around 8cm long, and as the name suggests, it has an elongated snout with a nose leaf on the end of it.
Fun Fact: While these are smaller than the greater long-nosed bat, this distinction is barely noticeable, and the latter is only 10% larger, making the two species easy to confuse.
Lesser Prairie Chicken
The Lesser Prairie Chicken is a species of grouse found in grasslands of the southern Great Plains. It has pretty classic grouse features, including a pair of inflatable neck pouches and a pointed crest.
Fun Fact: These grouse are at the forefront of a political debacle involving the Keystone XL pipeline, with corrupt politicians trying to strip them of their protected status in order to destroy their habitat for profit.
Lesser Scaup
The Lesser Scaup is a species of diving duck found in North America. It has bright yellow or brown eyes, grows up to 50cm long, and males have a black, iridescent head.
Fun Fact: This species is slowly increasing its presence in Western Europe, with an average of around 2 more ducks showing up each year.
Lesser Siren
The Lesser Siren is an aquatic species of salamander found in the eastern United States. They’re long, generally spotted brown and live in ponds and wetlands.
Fun Fact: Strangely, these salamanders only have one pair of limbs. They have two arms that stick out behind their heads and that’s it.
Lesser Spotted Eagle
The Lesser Spotted Eagle is a medium-sized eagle from Central and Eastern Europe, to Africa and the Mediterranean. They’re generally pale brown with a wingspan of up to 1.5m.
Fun Fact: Lesser Spotted Eagles are highly migratory birds, travelling long distances between breeding and wintering grounds. Some make the journey as far as from Italy to South Africa.
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is a true woodpecker from the Palearctic area. They’re smaller than most in the Picidae family, growing to 16cm and resemble the larger, greater spotted woodpeckers.
Fun Fact: These tiny woodpeckers carve nests into trees by creating a small hole and then a descending shaft that may lead 40cm below the entrance.
Lesser Stag Beetle
The Lesser Stag Beetle is a species of beetle found in Europe and Asia. It’s smaller but more common than the rare, greater stag beetle, and both the male and female look like the female of that species.
Fun Fact: Lesser stag beetles play important roles in forest ecosystems, contributing to nutrient cycling by feeding on decaying wood and helping decompose organic matter, and their conservation is a strong reason to leave rotting wood where it falls.
Lesser Water Boatman
The Lesser Water Boatman is an aquatic hemipteran that grows to only 1.5cm long and can be seen rowing through the surface waters of lakes and ponds. They feed on algae and plant matter.
Fun Fact: The long, swimming legs of these insects also trap air bubbles on their hairs, allowing the insects to breathe underwater.
Lesser Yellowlegs
The Lesser Yellowlegs is a species of long-legged, medium-sized shorebird found across the Americas. They grow up to 25cm long and have characteristically bright yellow legs.
Fun Fact: These birds are impressive migrants, making the journey from breeding sites in Northern Canada all the way to the southern tip of South America for Wintering.
Lesula
The Lesula is a species of monkey discovered to science in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2007. It’s a shy monkey, and still not fully understood.
Fun Fact: While locals knew and hunted this monkey, researchers only just found out about it. Its characteristic booming calls are very distinctive.
Lettuce Sea Slug
The Lettuce Sea Slug is an often-green and frilly species of sea slug found in tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes they can be blue or pale, or a mix of colours, but they resemble a leaf from a Batavia lettuce.
Fun Fact: Many lettuce sea slugs are solar-powered animals, obtaining energy from the photosynthetic algae they consume and hosting this algae within their tissues for mutual benefit.
Levaillant’s Cuckoo
Levaillant’s Cuckoo is a good-looking cuckoo species from bushy habitats in sub-Saharan Africa. They’re dark-winged with a light, speckled belly and a crest on their heads.
Fun Fact: Like so many cuckoos, these are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other bird species and relying on the host birds to raise their young.
Lhasa Apso
The Lhasa Apso is a small and hairy dog breed originating from Tibet. It has a long, flowing coat, alert demeanour, and stands about 25cm tall.
Fun Fact: This breed is at least 1000 years old and has a historical role as a watchdog in Tibetan monasteries.
Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse
Lichtenstein’s sandgrouse comes from the harsh deserts of South Sudan and can be found dotted around the deserts of Africa and the Middle East. It’s a small and shy bird, with barred grey plumage.
Fun Fact: Unlike most of the other sand grouses, this one apparently prefers to drink at dusk, showing an uncharacteristic level of sophistication.
Liger
The Liger is a hybrid big cat resulting from the crossbreeding of a male lion and a female tiger. They’re huge, usually unhealthy, and have unique colouration. They do not exist in the wild and males are sterile.
Fun Fact: Ligers are the largest known cats in the world, often exceeding the size of their lion and tiger parents.
Lilac-breasted Roller
The Lilac-breasted Roller is a highly colourful species of roller bird found in sub-Saharan Africa. They’re members of the kingfisher order and have incredibly varied plumage with patches of purples, blues and oranges.
Fun Fact: Lilac-breasted Rollers are stunning animals, and members of one of the most colourful genera of the Coraciiforms. They’re the national bird of Kenya.
Limousin Cattle
Limousin Cattle are huge, muscular and big-bones cows from the Limousin region of France. They’re now found all over Europe, Africa and North America.
Fun Fact: Limousin Cattle are so large that they were traditionally used as working animals as well as for beef production. These “beasts of burden” would pull ploughs and carry materials.
Limpet
The Limpets are a polyphyletic group of marine gastropods with conical shells, found in intertidal zones worldwide. They’re well known for their strong attachment to rocky substrates, where they spend their lives grazing on algae.
Fun Fact: Like other snails, limpets have a radula: a toothed tongue which loses and replaces teeth on a conveyer-like system and with which it scrapes the surface of its rocks for nutrients.
Limpkin
The Limpkin is an ibis-shaped wading bird found in the wetlands of the Americas. It’s got long legs and a curved beak and grows to about 70cm tall.
Fun Fact: Juveniles of this species grow quickly. They can swim and walk almost immediately after hatching and will be adult-sized within seven weeks.
Lincoln Sheep
Lincoln Sheep are a shaggy breed of longwool domestic sheep originating from England. They have long, woolly fleeces, and sturdy builds, and are some of the true heavyweights in the domestic sheep world.
Fun Fact: Lincoln Sheep are one of the largest sheep breeds, with rams weighing up to 160 kg. They were developed specifically to produce the heaviest, longest and most lustrous fleece of any breed in the world.
Lineback Cattle
Lineback Cattle are a breed of dairy cattle bred in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries. They have a distinctive black coat with a white line down their backs.
Fun Fact: These are some of the early generalist breeds, providing both beef and milk in large quantities, but have become rare with the advent of more specialist breeds that are better at one or the other.
Lined Day Gecko
The Lined Day Gecko is a diurnal gecko species from Madagascar. It’s mostly green, with males having red markings on its nose and lower back and a distinctive band of light blue on its tail tip.
Fun Fact: These geckos use their tails to store fat, which they can build up in times of plenty and make use of when food becomes harder to find.
Lined Seahorse
The Lined Seahorse is a 15cm long seahorse from the western Atlantic. They come in a lot of different colours and are bony, armoured-looking seahorses with a plated appearance.
Fun Fact: These seahorses communicate using sound, by sliding their skulls against a special sound-producing organ called a coronet on the back of their heads.
Lined Snake
Lined snakes are a genus of Colubrid snakes with a single species, endemic to North America. They’re usually olive green or brown with a lighter stripe running down from the head to the tail. These are small snakes maxing out at 50cm.
Fun Fact: This is a burrowing snake, and has a slender, pointed head to make it easier to dig. It feeds mostly on earthworms and is nonvenomous.
Linnet
The Linnet is a small finch species found in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Males have reddish breeding plumage but both sexes are otherwise quite plain. They feed mostly on seeds from the ground.
Fun Fact: These little birds migrate fairly long distances to overwinter. Some have even been found several hundred kilometres offshore.
Lion
Lions are some of the largest cats on the planet and make up the social prides of related individuals in both Africa and Asia. They’re deadly predators and hunt large herbivores as a team.
Fun Fact: Lions are the only truly social cats, marking their territories with scent and sound; their roars can be heard from 8km away.
Lion Tamarin
The Lion Tamarins are a group of small, maned marmosets native to Brazil. They’re so-named because of their shaggy neck ruffs and long fur. These are small monkeys, weighing up to 900g and not often exceeding about 30cm long without their tails.
Fun Fact: These monkeys have exceptionally long tails, usually around 50% longer than their bodies.
Lion-Tailed Macaque
The Lion-Tailed Macaque is an Old_world species of monkey found in the Western Ghats of India. It has distinctive, grey, mane-like hair around its face, and black fur, and can grow to about 10kg in weight.
Fun Fact: Lion-tailed macaques are among the most threatened and rarest species of any primate, having had their populations decimated by habitat fragmentation.
Lion’s Mane Jellyfish
The Lion’s Mane Jellyfish is a very large jellyfish species found in cold waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic, and North Pacific. Where most jellies are rounded, this one has a series of eight lobes, giving it a more star-shaped appearance.
Fun Fact: This is the largest known species of jellyfish with a bell of over two meters across. Recently, blooms of this species are becoming more common, and some have been said to be over 2km across.
Lionfish
Lionfish make up a genus of highly venomous marine fish from the Indo-Pacific region. They are spectacularly colourful and frilly animals with fins coming out at all angles and vivid stripes that remind predators to stay away.
Fun Fact: Despite being highly dangerous, there are some bigger fish. Moray eels, barracudas and groupers are known to be tough enough to take on this venomous and spiny animal.
Litter Beetle
Litter beetles are 6mm long black beetles with reddish brown legs from the Darkwing beetle family. They’re known as the Lesser mealworm beetles, though they occupy a different genus. These ones love warm humid environments and as the name suggests, are detritus feeders.
Fun Fact: Like mealworms, the larvae of this species are marketed as food, sold under the name buffalo worms, and are highly nutritious.
Litter Skink
Litter skinks are a genus of skink endemic to New Caledonia. There are 14 known species, all relatively small at around 15cm at most.
Fun Fact: Litter Skinks are secretive and many species have only been observed a handful of times.
Little Blue Heron
The Little Blue Heron is a small, grey-blue heron with a distinctive grey, black-tipped beak. This species is found over a lot of the Americas and grows up to around 70cm tall.
Fun Fact: Little Blue Herons undergo a striking transformation in plumage colouration as they mature, starting with white plumage as juveniles and gradually transitioning to bluish-grey as they mature.
Little Blue Penguin
The Little Blue Penguin is one of the smallest penguin species, found in coastal regions of New Zealand. They grow to just over 30cm tall and weigh about 1.5kg.
Fun Fact: These penguins might be the smallest penguin species known, and since the Australian population was recently discovered to be a distinct species, they can only be found in New Zealand.
Little Brown Bat
The Little Brown Bat is a species of mouse-eared bat found in North America. Large individuals grow up to 12g and 10cm long.
Fun Fact: These little bats copulate in Autumn and the female safely stores the sperm, withholding fertilisation until Spring.
Little Bustard
The little bustard is a small bustard species from the dry, open grasslands of Southern Europe and Central/Western Asia. It grows to about 45cm long and 850g and breeding males have extravagant neck markings and jumping courtship displays.
Fun Fact: While they can fly, these birds prefer to run when threatened and will only take to the air if pushed to it.
Little Egret
The Little Egret is a small, elegant, white heron species found in Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania. It has a black beak and legs and grows to 65cm long.
Fun Fact: Despite the name, the cattle egret is just a little smaller, and the two species can be differentiated by the colour of their legs and beaks, which are yellow in cattle egrets.
Little File Snake
Little file snakes, sometimes known as wart snakes, live in aquatic and coastal regions of Southeast Asia and Australia. They’re strictly aquatic but can tolerate both fresh and saltwater.
Fun Fact: These snakes are often vividly striped with white bands on dark skin, but they’re not really venomous; they have special, sandpaper scales to help them grip prey and constrict it.
Little Grebe
The little grebe is the smallest European grebe and grows to no more than 30cm long. Their range extends to Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. They’re highly adapted to chasing prey underwater.
Fun Fact: These birds have their legs too far back to be able to walk well, on account of them being so well adapted to swimming.
Little Owl
The Little Owl is a small owl species found across Eurasia and Northern Africa. They grow to about 22cm long and are speckled brown with yellow eyes.
Fun Fact: These small owls will nest in almost any cavities they can find, from tree holes to rabbit burrows.
Little Skate
The Little Skate is a small species of skate found in the western Atlantic Ocean. It’s a very flat, cartilaginous fish, sandy-coloured and grows to about 55cm across.
Fun Fact: These skates employ an unusual method of locomotion called “punting” where the front lobes of the pelvic fins are used to push against the substrate, allowing the fish to glide along some way before doing it again.
Little Spotted Kiwi
The Little Spotted Kiwi is the smallest of New Zealand’s five species of ratite. They grow up to 2kg and 45cm long and are plump and flightless animals with a terrifying call.
Fun Fact: Kiwi conservation has caused the collateral damage of the total extinction of a specialist parasitic louse that needed the kiwi as a host. When this rare kiwi was rounded up for survival, all the lice were killed and the species no longer exists.
Little Tern
The Little Tern is a small seabird species found in coastal regions in Europe, South Africa, Australia and Asia. It has predominantly white plumage, a black cap, and agile, pointed wings.
Fun Fact: Terns plunge into water to catch fish. When courting, the male will present the female with a gift of fish plucked fresh out of the water. Don’t try this as a human.
Liver Fluke
The Liver Fluke is a parasitic flatworm found in the liver and bile ducts of mammals. They mostly have fish or snails as their intermediary hosts and can get into humans and other animals who eat them.
Fun Fact: Liver Flukes have complex, specialised life cycles involving multiple hosts and and can cause liver inflammation, fibrosis, and other health issues, posing economic and health concerns in affected regions.
Livyatan
Livyatan was a genus of prehistoric sperm whales that lived until around 5 million years ago all over the world. This predatory monster could have been 17 meters long and feasted on baleen whales.
Fun Fact: The teeth of the Livyatan were over 31cm long, some of the largest in the animal kingdom, ever.
Lizard
Lizards are a diverse group of squamate reptiles, known for their scaly skin and elongated bodies. They occupy niches all over the world except for Antarctica, and range from aquatic to arboreal.
Fun Fact: It was once thought that there was only one venomous lizard – the Gila monster. Then, it was discovered Komodo dragons are also venomous. Now, it’s thought that perhaps all lizards (and certainly all monitors) are venomous to some extent.
Lizardfish
Lizardfish are a family of bottom-dwelling marine and estuarine fish with wide, toothy mouths. The largest of them grows to about 60cm
Fun Fact: These fish are so toothy that even their tongues are covered in teeth.
Llama
The Llama, a domesticated South American camelid species, is well known for its woolly coat, long neck, and its cultural significance as a pack animal in South America. They’re intelligent and tough animals who will spit at you if you annoy them.
Fun Fact: Llamas descended from the wild guanaco, which still exists today.
Loach
Loaches are tough, nocturnal freshwater fish belonging to the superfamily Cobitoidea. They’re bottom-dwellers found in Eurasia and Northern Africa and are often brightly coloured and striped.
Fun Fact: This diverse group has so many variants that it’s hard to tell that they’re related without looking at the skeletal characteristics and the poor fish rarely recover from that.
Lobster
Lobsters are large marine crustaceans with long bodies and powerful tails. They walk along the sea floor and have large claws for defending themselves and are usually blue or brown but come in various colours depending on the species.
Fun Fact: Lobsters actually have three pairs of claws; it’s only the very front ones that are exaggerated, but the two pairs of legs behind these have claws on them, too.
Locust
Locusts are any type of large grasshopper belonging to the family Acrididae that has entered its swarming phase. They are well known for blocking out the sun and causing famine when people don’t pray enough or when they become overcrowded.
Fun Fact: Locust swarms are triggered by a specific sequence of physical contact with other locusts. If a locust brushes up against another locust too many times in 4 hours, all hell breaks loose.
Loggerhead kingbird
Loggerhead kingbirds are small passerines of about 22cm long. They’re dark grey with a white belly and a little crown patch. They’re native to montane and lowland forest regions in Florida and Central America.
Fun Fact: This is a chunky, box-headed New-World flycatcher, but it doesn’t seem to realise it. The loggerhead will commonly eat fruit, berries and small lizards.
Loggerhead musk turtle
The loggerhead musk turtle is a small, 12cm freshwater turtle from the US. They’re a standard musk turtles but with a larger-than-average head.
Fun Fact: As the name suggests, this animal is capable of releasing a distinctive odour from glands around its back end if disturbed. As a musk turtle, the loggerhead is one of the few turtles to provide parental care to its young.
Loggerhead Sea Turtle
The Loggerhead is a species of marine turtle found in oceans worldwide. Exceptional specimens can reach 450kg and they’re usually yellowy-brown in colour with a reddish-brown shell.
Fun Fact: Loggerheads nest in huge colonies on sandy beaches. In Florida, there are beaches in which more than 60,000 nests are built each year.
Loggerhead Shrike
The Loggerhead Shrike is North America’s only endemic species of shrike. It’s grey on top with a black mask and a powerful, hooked beak.
Fun Fact: Loggerhead shrikes are nicknamed “Butcherbirds” for their habit of skewering insects, small birds, and rodents spiny thorned bushes or barbed wire.
Loggerhead sponge
The loggerhead sponge is an enormous, suspension-feeding sea sponge that grows on the sea bed like a giant squishy cake. It’s found all over the Caribbean and comes in a variety of colours.
Fun Fact: This sponge is toxic to most fish species, but commonly eaten by the Hawksbill turtle.
Lone Star Tick
The Lone star tick is a species of arachnid found in North America, named for the distinctive white “lone star” marking on the female’s back. It’s a reddish-brown tick and infamous for spreading diseases.
Fun Fact: These ticks have three hosts in their life cycles; they feed on different animals at each of their larval, nymphal and adult stages.
Long Arm Octopus
The Long Arm Octopus is a species of cephalopod found in coastal waters in Asia. It’s usually grey or brown but can change colour to blend in with its background.
Fun Fact: Long Arm Octopuses have specialized arm morphology for hunting in narrow crevices and capturing prey, lending them their nickname.
Long Arm Squid
The Long Arm Squid is a small deep-sea squid from the Mediterranean with extremely elongated arms and tentacles. Its mantle length may be only 12cm but its limbs can add over a meter to its length.
Fun Fact: Long-arm squids have two exceptionally long tentacles that shoot out hydraulically to catch prey.
Long Barbel Goatfish
The Long Barbel Goatfish is a species of goatfish found in tropical lagoons and reefs found in the Indo-West Pacific. They’re 17cm long, with salmon-orange backs, a lateral dark stripe and pale bellies.
Fun Fact: Long Barbel Goatfish use their barbels to detect small invertebrates on the sea floor.
Long Snouted Pipefish
The Long Snouted Pipefish is a species of pipefish found around New Zealand. Pipefish are essentially uncoiled sea horses and generally have long noses but this one has even more nose than usual. They’re shallow-water fish and grow to 25cm long.
Fun Fact: These funny fish sometimes take a leaf out of the seahorse’s book and swim about vertically, hiding in plain sight among the seagrass.
Long-Beaked Common Dolphin
The Long-Beaked Common Dolphin is a medium-sized species of dolphin found in oceans worldwide. They’re about 2m long, and have a slightly longer nose than the short-beaked common dolphin but are otherwise almost identical.
Fun Fact: These dolphins are highly social and intelligent and are often seen in large pods, taking part in energetic leaps, spins, and bow-riding in front of boats.
Long-Billed Corella
The Long-Billed Corella is a species of white cockatoo found in Australia. It’s a medium-sized model with a long, slender beak, white plumage, and touches of pink around the face.
Fun Fact: Long-billed corellas are intelligent and social birds, making them both great pets and great pests.
Long-Billed Curlew
The Long-Billed Curlew is another somewhat ibis-imitating shorebird found in North America. They’re speckled brown with a very curved beak and long legs and grow to about 65cm long.
Fun Fact: Long-billed curlews have the longest bill of any North American shorebird, which they use to probe for invertebrates like crabs, worms, and small molluscs in mudflats and marshes.
Long-billed Dowitcher
The Long-billed Dowitcher is a species of shorebird found in North America. It has a long, straight beak, grey or cinnamon plumage and long, yellow legs.
Fun Fact: This bird’s feeding behaviour is said to be sewing machine-like as it rummages for food beneath the mud.
Long-billed Thrasher
The Long-billed Thrasher is a thrush-coloured thrasher with a surprised expression and yellow eyes, found in eastern Mexico. It has a long, slightly curved bill and a sweet, chirping song.
Fun Fact: The name of this bird comes from its frantic thrashing through leaf litter when it senses food is near.
Long-billed Vulture
The Long-billed Vulture, or Indian Vulture, is a species of Old-World vulture found in South Asia. It’s a very large bird, characteristically vulture-like and has wide, boxy wings up to 2.5 meters across.
Fun Fact: The long and wide wings on this massive bird help keep it aloft, soaring for u to 7 hours at a time with ease.
Long-eared Flying Mouse
The Long-eared flying mouse is a mysterious, 20cm-long rodent from Africa that glides like a flying squirrel, yet is neither a mouse nor a squirrel. They’re likely fruit-eaters and live in groups of up to 40 but nobody can keep them alive in captivity so information is lacking.
Fun Fact: This rodent has another nickname: the long-eared scaly-tailed flying squirrel, which is just an embarrassing mouthful that should never have been conceived.
Long-eared Hedgehog
The Long-eared Hedgehog is a species of hedgehog found in Central Asia and the Middle East. It looks exactly as you’d expect a long-eared hedgehog to look and weighs up to 400g.
Fun Fact: These adorable little hedgehogs make great pest control and clear up insects and slugs from agricultural land very effectively.
Long-eared Jerboa
The Long-eared Jerboa is a nocturnal rodent species from the deserts of Central Asia. Like all jerboas, they have enormous feet and long tails, but these also balance them with epic ears. The whole creature only weighs 24g.
Fun Fact: This tiny rodent has the longest ears relative to the body weight of any animal on Earth.
Long-Eared Owl
The Long-Eared Owls are supremely camouflaged raptors found in Europe, Asia, and North America. If you spot one, you’ll see its long ear tufts that give it the name.
Fun Fact: This is one of the most widely distributed and plentiful owl species in the world, spanning most of the Northern Hemisphere below the Arctic.
Long-fingered Bat
The Long-fingered Bat is a species of microbat found around the Mediterranean. They’re about 5cm long and live in wooded areas and limestone caves.
Fun Fact: This bat has extra-long feet for dropping into the water like a fish eagle, ideally coming back up with a fish attached.
Long-finned Pilot Whale
The Long-finned Pilot Whale is a large dolphin species found in cool oceans worldwide. It has a torpedo shape with a rounded head
Fun Fact: This whale has more neurons in its neocortex than any known mammal, including humans. In fact, it has twice as many as found in humans.
Long-horned Orb-Weaver Spider
The Long-horned Orb-Weaver, Macracantha arcuata, is a spectacular species of Asian orb-weaver named for its incredible elongated abdomen projections. They’re commonly 2.5cm, protruding from an abdomen only 8mm wide.
Fun Fact: This spider makes webs over a meter wide, with the yellow, red, white, or black female sitting in the middle of it, looking exceptionally horny.
Long-nosed Bandicoot
The Long-nosed Bandicoot is an Eastern Australian marsupial with a shrew-like nose. It’s about 40cm long and mostly grey.
Fun Fact: Long-nosed Bandicoots have an unusual backwards-facing pouch, allowing them to dig for food while protecting their young from dirt.
Long-nosed Leopard Lizard
The Long-nosed Leopard Lizard is a 12-cm species of lizard found in North America. It has a longer tail than its body, is usually a sandy colour and prefers semiarid plains.
Fun Fact: This is a fast lizard species, known to pull a wheelie when running, in which its front limbs come off the ground and its powerful real limbs do all the work.
Long-nosed Potoroo
The Long-nosed Potoroo is a small, hopping marsupial found in Tasmania and Southern Australia. It’s somewhat rat-like, solitary, and mostly eats fungi and seeds.
Fun Fact: Long-nosed Potoroos play essential roles in the dispersal of fungal spores, depositing them around the roots of native plants where they begin a symbiotic relationship in the soil.
Long-nosed Snake
The Long-nosed Snake is a nonvenomous colubrid snake from North America, though you wouldn’t know to look at it. It’s red and black, less than a meter long, slender, and has an upturned nose, giving it the nickname.
Fun Fact: The defence mechanism of this snake is interesting. Like many, they will release a foul musk from anal glands, but unlike most, they’ll also shit blood if that doesn’t get you to leave them alone.
Long-nosed Whip Snake
The Long-nosed Tree Snake, also called the Sri Lankan green vine snake, is a species of arboreal snake found in Sri Lanka. It’s a vibrant green snake named for its elongated snout and very slender body. They’re only mildly venomous and feed on frogs and lizards.
Fun Fact: The local myth that these snakes strike at people’s eyes led to the genus name, Ahaetulla, which means “eye-plucker”.
Long-snouted Seahorse
The Long-snouted Seahorse is a 21-cm-long seahorse found in the Atlantic Ocean. They’re various different colours, but all have a slender body and long snouts (even by seahorse standards).
Fun Fact: This is one of the few seahorse species you can see in the South of England, often holding onto eelgrass, munching on small crustaceans.
Long-tailed Brush Lizard
The Long-tailed Brush Lizard is a sandy-coloured desert lizard from North America. This species spends most of its time in the bush and doesn’t burrow at night like other members of its family.
Fun Fact: The long-tailed lizard is not an exaggeration – its tail is over twice the length of its body.
Long-tailed Chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera)
The Long-tailed Chinchilla is a South American rodent of around 25cm long. Its tail adds another 10cm or more, and it weighs around 400g. This is a fluffy animal, usually grey in the wild but selectively bred variants can be all different colours.
Fun Fact: This species was historically hunted for its fur, which is said to be some of the softest in the world.
Long-tailed Climbing Mice
The Long-tailed climbing mice are a genus of small rodents from Asia. There are only three species, all of which are true mice. They’re about 10cm long, with a 13cm tail and long black whiskers.
Fun Fact: Long-tailed Tree Mice have specialized adaptations for climbing and leaping between trees, including opposable toes on their feet and nails instead of claws.
Long-tailed Duck
The Long-tailed Duck is a slender-looking sea duck species, the males of which sport contrasting black and white plumage and an incredible, elongated tail feather.
Fun Fact: Even with the frills, these ducks can dive down to 60 meters beneath the surface in search of food.
Long-tailed Macaque
The long-tailed, or crab-eating, macaque is a species of monkey found in Southeast Asia, known for its long tail, opportunistic diet, and social groups in forests and urban areas.
Fun Fact: Long-tailed Macaques are highly adaptable and intelligent, using tools for foraging and showing complex social behaviours within troops, and they are known for their curiosity and ability to thrive in diverse habitats.
Long-tailed Marmot
The Long-tailed Marmot is a clever little monkey species from Southeast Asia. They’re mostly brown or grey and typically monkey-like, growing up to 7kg or so, and are said to be able to use tools.
Fun Fact: Humans can’t seem to make up their minds about this species. Once a sacred animal, it was relegated to pest status and has recently become an unwilling test subject for medical experiments.
Long-tailed Mealybug
The Long-tailed Mealybug is a 3mm species of insect found in gardens and agricultural crops worldwide. It’s surrounded by waxy filaments, two of which protrude well behind the animal, giving it its name.
Fun Fact: These odd little insects are hemipteran plant parasites and feed on over 26 known plant species. They’re commonly predated upon by lacewings.
Long-tailed Planigale
The Long-tailed Planigale is a tiny species of mouse-like marsupial found in Australia. They’re about 6cm long, with another 6cm of bare tail. A particularly fat one can weigh 6g.
Fun Fact: This is the smallest of any marsupial, and their heads are flattened to just 3 to 4mm from top to bottom. The skull is one-fifth as deep as it is wide.
Long-tailed Pocket Mouse
The Long-tailed Pocket Mouse is a desert rodent from North America. They get up to around 10cm long with a tail of around the same length and are grey with large kangaroo-like feet and a downward-curving snout.
Fun Fact: These are not really mice, but in the family of kangaroo rats (not rats, either), which explains the feet.
Long-tailed Pygmy Possum
The Long-tailed Pygmy Possum is a diprotodont marsupial from Northern Ausrtralia and New Guinea. It looks very rodent-like, but sports the classic marsupial pouch and its tail is about 1.5 times its body length.
Fun Fact: These are quite high-altitude marsupials, living above 1,500 meters, feeding mostly on nectar and insects.
Long-tailed Shrew
The Long-tailed Shrew is a tiny rodent from the Northeastern parts of North America. With the tail included, it’s no more than 12cm long, and its tail is used for balance when clambering over rocks.
Fun Fact: The very pointy little face of this rodent allows it to penetrate cracks and crevices from which it can extract worms centipedes and other critters to eat.
Long-Tailed Tit
The Long-Tailed Tit is a species of small songbird found all over temperate Europe and Asia and up into Scandinavia. They’re around 15cm long, black and white, with a short, stubby beak.
Fun Fact: These birds help look after each other’s kids. If one pair’s chicks don’t make it, their efforts are redirected to juveniles from other pairs.
Long-tailed Weasel
The Long-tailed Weasel, also called the masked ermine, is a mustelid from North America. It’s not a true weasel (or ermine) and occupies the North American equivalent genus Neogale which is closely related. They’re brown in the Summer and white in the winter.
Fun Fact: These mustelids are surprisingly powerful, obligate carnivores and will hunt anything from rodents to fish and birds.
Long-toed Salamander
The Long-toed Salamander is a relative of the axolotl from North America. It grows to about 9cm long and has black, brown, and yellow colouration. On its hind limbs the fourth toe is extended, giving it the common name.
Fun Fact: These salamanders have glands under their chins that secrete hormones. They’re activated when the male rubs his face on the female.
Long-Winged Kite Spider
The Long-Winged Kite Spider is a species of spiny orb-weaver with long, wide, horn-like protrusions from its abdomen. It’s found in Central, East and Southern Africa and is usually no more than 1cm long.
Fun Fact: These spiders look a lot scarier than they are, and while venomous, their bites aren’t thought to be medically significant.
Longfin Bannerfish
The Longfin Bannerfish is also known as the pennant coralfish and is a species of butterflyfish from the Indo-Pacific. It has an arching dorsal fin and distinctive black and white vertical bands.
Fun Fact: These stunning fish gather in large schools around the reef and feed on coral polyps and small crustaceans.
Longfin Eel
The longfin eels are a group of true eel species found all over the world. Some are marine, others freshwater, all are named because of the dorsal fins that run much closer to the head of the eel than the opposite anal fin.
Fun Fact: The New Zealand longfin eels are very long-lived freshwater fish, the females can live up to 35 years.
Longfin Mako
The Longfin Mako is a species of mackerel shark, distinguishable from its short-fin cousin by its elongated pectoral fins and greater size. It grows to around 4 meters long and is dark blue to greyish black, counter-shaded.
Fun Fact: This species is said to be one of the fastest and most active sharks and uses keen eyesight to hunt.
Longfin Tuna
The Longfin Tuna, also known as the albacore, is a temperate and tropical tuna species with the classic, rigid and streamlined body of its genus but extremely elongated pectoral fins, often more than 30% of the length of its body.
Fun Fact: These powerful predators are small for a tuna. They’re less than a meter and a half long, and the smallest of the bluefin species, and mostly eat cephalopods.
Longfin Yellowtail
The longfin yellowtail is a predatory fish found in pelagic marine waters in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It grows up to 1.6 meters long, and eats smaller fish and cephalopods, hunting both during the day and at night.
Fun Fact: These fish have incredible stamina as open water fishes. This might be what gives them the balls to rub their bodies along the skin of passing sharks to rid themselves of parasites.
Longhorn Beetle
The Longhorn Beetles are a diverse family of beetles named for their elongated antennae. These are often longer than the beetle’s body, which is also slender and long already. They’re generally known to have wood-boring larvae and can grow very large, up to 18cm.
Fun Fact: Longhorn Beetles can hiss loudly by rubbing their heads against their wingcases. It’s a very effective deterrent to mammalian interference.
Longnose Gar
The Longnose Gar is a species of freshwater fish found in North American rivers. It has a long body with an elongated snout full of teeth and grows to about 1.8 m long.
Fun Fact: These fish are top predators in much of their range, preying on a variety of other fish species and having few or no natural enemies themselves.
Longnose Sucker
The Longnose Sucker is a freshwater fish with a name that could be misconstrued in several ways. It’s a bottom-feeder, which doesn’t make things any better. This 3kg fish eats plants and algae in North America and Asia.
Fun Fact: There is a whole order of suckers with at least 77 other species in it, but this one is the only sucker native to Asia.
Longspine Squirrelfish
The Longspine Squirrelfish is a nocturnal species of reef fish found in tropical waters of the Western Atlantic. It’s a silvery-red colour with large eyes and an elongated spine on its anal fin.
Fun Fact: These squirrelfish can grunt at one another when defending their territory, or string a series of grunts into a staccato when sounding the alarm.
Longspur
The Longspurs are a genus of ground-feeding birds named for the long claw on the back of their foot. They’re found in Europe, Asia and North America, and there are three recognised species.
Fun Fact: These finch-like birds are voracious feeders. In Winter they’ll mostly eat seeds but in Summer they can eat up to 10,000 insects per day, more when hunting for their young too.
Longtail Tuna
The Longtail Tuna is a relatively small tuna species from the Australia. It’s a bluefin and grows to about 36kg in weight and 1.5m long.
Fun Fact: This species of tuna takes a lot longer to grow than others, but it also lives longer and has longer generation times.
Longtooth Grouper
The Longtooth Grouper, or kelp grouper is a medium-sized grouper species from East Asia. They grow to about 1.3 meters and around 35kg. They’re greyish-brown with a blotchy pattern on their skin.
Fun Fact: Despite being quite large fish, not much is known about this species. Their juveniles spend time in very shallow water, moving to water up to 200m deep as they mature.
Loon
The Loons are a genus of duck-like diving birds, more closely related to cormorants. They eat fish, amphibians and crustaceans, and are good at diving and flying, though not so good at walking.
Fun Fact: Loons, like chickens, swallow grit and stones to make up for their lack of teeth. These hard items help grind up their food.
Lophelia
The Lophelia coral is a genus with only one species of coral, found in cold-water, deep-sea habitats in the North Atlantic. Unlike many species, this one tolerates depths of up to 3000 m and temperatures as low as 4 degrees.
Fun Fact: 350m under the water around the Lofoten islands in Norway, there’s a reef of this coral that’s 35m high, 3km wide and 35km long.
Lorikeet
The Lorikeets are a tribe of small arboreal parrots from Australasia. There are 19 genera with 61 species recorded, most are a mix of green and red and have a lot of character.
Fun Fact: Lories and lorikeets are not taxonomically distinct, and either name can be used for both.
Loris
The Lorises are a subfamily of lemur-like primates from Asia. They’re arboreal, nocturnal, and generally have huge eyes. Some eat insects, others eat fruit and nectar.
Fun Fact: Lorises have a special toothcomb in their lower front teeth, which they use for grooming their fur and even injecting a toxic venom. They can cover themselves in this venom to make them toxic to predators.
Louisiana Heron
The Louisiana heron, now more commonly called the tricoloured heron, is a small American heron with a yellow face that grows to about 75cm tall. Adults are blue-grey on the head and back, and white underneath.
Fun Fact: This species is much more specialist in its diet than most in the genus. While others eat crabs, frogs, and other non-fishy animals, the Louisiana heron eats almost exclusively fish.
Louisiana Pine Snake
The Louisiana Pine Snake is a nonvenomous colubrid snake from the southern US. It’s typically a blotchy yellow and brown and grows up to 1.2m long and likes sandy soils and pine savannas.
Fun Fact: This snake prefers loose soils because it likes to spend most of its time underground. They use this to forage and regulate their body temperatures.
Louse
Lice make up around 5000 species of parasitic insects. They have specialised feet and mouthparts for latching onto warm-blooded hosts and drinking their blood or skin secretions. They’re small – the largest species is only 6mm long.
Fun Fact: Lice live on every species of bird and mammal except monotremes, bats and pangolins.
Louvar
The Louvar is a large open-water fish in the surgeonfish suborder but is the only pelagic species in this group. It has a very oval-shaped head with eyes that are lower than they should be and grow to 150kg in weight.
Fun Fact: Juveniles have really long, sail-like dorsal and anal fins that grow all the way up to the head. These are lost as the fish matures.
Lovebird
The Lovebirds belong to the Agapornis genus and are a group of small parrots native to Africa. They grow to 17cm long and are mostly green and stocky.
Fun Fact: Lovebirds get their name for being highly affectionate and social with one another, seemingly enjoying one another’s company more than most.
Lowchen
The Lowchen, also known as the little lion dog, is a small breed of dog from the 16th century. It’s historically and often had its coat trimmed at the back to make it look a bit like a lion.
Fun Fact: Lowchens were historically favoured by nobility and royalty, and depicted in paintings and sculptures as decorative lapdogs.
Lowland Anoa
The Lowland Anoa is a Sulawesi buffalo species. It has straight, swept-back horns, and dark or black skin and grows to about 300kg and is just under a meter tall.
Fun Fact: These little cows are great swimmers. They are able to swim long distances between some of the offshore islands around Sulawesi.
Lowland Paca
The lowland, or spotted, paca is a strange-looking rodent from South and Central America. It resembles a spotted agouti and grows up to 12kg. It has bulging, brown eyes and lives in burrows under forested ground.
Fun Fact: These funny little guys are important seed dispersers in tropical forests, eating fruits and nuts and spreading seeds through their faeces.
Lowland Streaked Tenrec
The Lowland Streaked Tenrec is a bizarre little tenrec species from Madagascar. They have punky yellow hair, a shrew-like nose and porcupine-like quills on their backs.
Fun Fact: The quills on this little animal’s back are also used to produce sound as a defence by rubbing them together. If that doesn’t work, the tenrec has a venomous bite.
Lowland Tapir
The Lowland Tapir is a shy and solitary mammal from the forests of South America. Lowland tapirs have a mane or crest along their head and backs and weigh up to 225kg. They have a small trunk and use it as a snorkel when swimming.
Fun Fact: While they look a bit like pigs or bovids, tapirs are more closely related to horses and rhinos in the order of odd-toed ungulates.
Luminous Hake
The Luminous Hake is a silvery, 30cm-long cod-like fish found in medium-depth waters around Central and South America. They have an elongated body that tapers to a point at the tail.
Fun Fact: This weird fish tends to stay on the muddy bottom of the waters it inhabits. Its main enemy is another species of hake, the offshore hake.
Lumpfish
The Lumpfish, or lumpsucker is a species of cold-water marine fish found in cold waters of the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Arctic oceans. They grow to around 50cm long and are a sort of lumpy oval shape.
Fun Fact: Lumpfish females lay a lot of eggs! A single adult can lay up to 220,000 over a season, in two batches.
Luna Moth
The Luna Moth, sometimes called the American moon moth, is a large species of green-coloured giant silk moth from North America. Males and females both have long trailing wing tips and are a leafy green with a purple frame at the front. These moths grow to over 10cm across.
Fun Fact: The larvae of this species click loudly when threatened and will throw up their intestinal contents as a deterrent.
Lungfish
The Lungfish is an ancient animal that lives in freshwater lakes and rivers in South Africa, America and Australia. These are only 4 species remaining of a once widespread order of Sarcopterygians. As the name suggests, they have a lung and can breathe air.
Fun Fact: Lungfishes are one of our closest living Sarcopterygian relatives, they are more closely related to the tetrapod fish that first left the water to become land vertebrates (and therefore, to us) than they are to the bony or cartilaginous fishes they share their world with.
Lunkarya Guinea Pig
The Lunkarya Guinea Pig is a 30 cm-long variation of the Peruvian guinea pig discovered in Sweden. A genetic mutation has led to them growing very long and shaggy coats. As with all guinea pigs, they’re good-natured and sweet animals.
Fun Fact: As you’d expect, these are high-maintenance guinea pigs and need to have their hair cut at least once a month.
Lurcher
The Lurcher is a greyhound mix, usually bred with a working breed, originally designed to help people poach rabbits and birds. They’re now popular companion dogs.
Fun Fact: Lurchers have an excellent combination of speed and intelligence, and were used as messenger dogs in both world wars.
Lusitano Horse
The Lusitano Horse is a powerful breed of horse from Portugal. They’re usually grey or brown, calm and intelligent (for a horse), and have a long history of being used on the battlefield.
Fun Fact: This breed is a descendant of the Iberian war horse that the Spanish and Portuguese used to take over South America.
Lykoi
The Lykoi Cat, also known as the werewolf cat, is any breed of domestic cat with a genetic mutation that gives it a unique appearance with sparse, patchy fur, giving it a scruffy look.
Fun Fact: The mutation has shown up only in the last 20 years and results in a loss of hair from partial to complete.
Lynx
The Lynx is one of four species of medium-sized wild cat species found in Europe, Asia, and North America. They’ve got clearly tufted ears, a short tails, and are stealthy hunters in forested habitats.
Fun Fact: The largest of the four, the Eurasian lynx, is a successful species that hunts in the Northernmost reaches of Europe and Asia. It’s rarely seen at all.
Lynx Spider
The Lynx Spiders are a family of small, true spiders found worldwide. They often camouflage themselves inside flowers and ambush insects that visit.
Fun Fact: Lynx Spiders can be distinguished from other families by their eye configuration. They have a ring of eyes around the head, the front pair being the largest, and two smaller eyes beneath.
Lyrebird
The Lyrebirds, belonging to the genus Menura, are a pair of Australian passerine ground birds, known for the elongated tail feathers males show off when mating.
Fun Fact: Lyrebirds are renowned for the complex and diverse mimicry in their vocalisations. They will mimic car horns, dogs, camera shutters and chainsaws during mating season to show off their repertoire.
What Other Animals Begin With ‘L’?
That completes our list of animals that begin with the letter L.
Hopefully you’ve learned a few new ones, but are there any that we’re missing in our list that you would like to see covered?
If so, get in touch. Please see our Animal A-Z list for animals that start with different letters.