Animals web pages

This page is one small part of Good Sites for Kids!

AKC for Kids Mostly about how to care for dogs and puppies, some reproducibles. The American Kennel Club is the most reputable dog organization in the US. The AKC list of recognized breeds has much information about different dog breeds, would be useful for reports. 

Animal Diversity Web from University of Michigan.  All about animals, from insects to humans. This site is at a junior high/grade 7 and up level.

Animal Information from SeaWorld/Busch Gardens has some sort of information on every animal.  Students will need to be fluent readers.  Younger kids will like Small Wonders (baby animals) and Animal Sounds the best. Wildopedia is a multimedia evolving reference. The keynote article was Adaptation when we looked, and they do a great job of explaining the concept. Just keep clicking the paw prints.

Animal Kingdom from Extreme Science. The animal section of the larger site. The most extreme animals.

Animal Kingdom from KidPort. Good, basic elementary level information about the members of the animal kingdom, with basic taxonomy (no big words).

Animal Planet is a place that's loaded with animal information and games! Their Petsource section has guides to cats, dogs, and other pets, cat and dog breed info, dog horoscopes (Whaaa?), games, and more! The Wild Animals section has an A to Z listing of animals, bird guides, mammal guides, butterfly guides, an endangered species guide, and a lot more! The Games sections is stupendous fun for kids of all ages. All these things can be reached from the golden menu bar near the top of the screen. Thanks to Jessica the Opsmart lady for this one.

Animals from the BBC. Something about every sort of animal there is! "Find out more about your favourite animals, where and how they live..." Hundreds of mammals and birds, dozens of amphibians, reptiles, fish, mollusks, crustaceans, insects, other arthropods, echinoderms. A great reference for school reports or just to explore!

Animals from National Geographic. This is Nat Geo's animal site map page, with photos and facts about animals from aardvark to zebra. There are a lot of photos here.

Animals at the Smithsonian's National Zoo Oh yeah! You have GOT to see this site to believe it! Stunning amounts of highly organized information presented so wonderfully! You come away with the same feelings you have after watching a good movie.

Animals section of KidsKnowIt. Big list of animals and facts.

Animals/Farming/Zoos (big list of ZOO links!) from Kids' World.

Aquatic Snakes of Southeast Asia from the Field Museum in Chicago. This is a good introduction to the subject of the cobra-related venomous snakes that live and hunt in swamps and oceans.

Archosaurs is about dinosaurs, crocodiles, birds, and all their diapsid relatives, both living and extinct. Part of UC Berkeley's gigantic tree of life web site complex (more on that below.) This is for older kids.

Arthropod Story "This interactive investigation delves into the amazing world of the arthropods..." Simple language and lots of pictures. From UC Berkeley.

Australian Animals Nice, easy to use site with lots of photos, and descriptions of how the animals interact with humans.  Many links to related animal sites.

Australian Animals from the Ettamogah Sanctuary in NSW.  Click on the animals on map of the Sanctuary and find out more about them.

Australian Animals - Our Animals  For younger students. Has lots of photos and information at a lower reading level (still good, though.) From the ABC, Australia's answer to the BBC.

Australian Fauna  "No rubbish, just fair dinkum Aussie animal info. "  "A magnificent site loaded with free information, a true asset to the Internet in Australia, and researchers Worldwide." This really is a good site for research, as it has a lot of information. Easy to use, animals in alphabetical order, too.

Bagheera Named after Mowgli's panther friend. One of the oldest endangered species sites, still a very good resource.

Bats of Jewel Cave Very good information on bats!

Big Cats Online Medium and small wild cats, too. Get the facts on all of them here.

Zoom Birds Like the rest of Enchanted Learning, this is a fine kid learning site, with a lot of good information about birds. If you find yourself using Enchanted Learning sites a lot, please subscribe.

Currently offline - we hope they are back up soon! Bird Adaptations from the Norman Bird Sanctuary.  This site describes different types of bird beaks and bird feet, and what they are used for.  Create-a-Bird lets you design your own bird and post it on the site! Link goes to Beak Adaptations, the link to Feet Adaptations is near the top left of the page.

Birds in the Classroom from the Fernbank Ornithology Center in Atlanta.  The frame on the left side of the page (pull it down to see it all) has links to pages on bird adaptations, anatomy and physiology, and bird behavior. Excellent site.

Blue Planet Games from BBC Blue Planet web site.  Learn about the oceans and have fun doing it!  If you haven't seen the Blue Planet DVD series, it's worth watching.

Blue-Ringed Octopus  This tiny, very deadly octopus doesn't show its famed blue rings until it's attacking! Then it's too late.  This is part of a larger Australian site called Cephalopod Research that covers octopi, squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus.

Breeds of Livestock: Horses This site will tell you everything you want to know about breeds of livestock, from cattle to pigs, from camels to yaks! Has links to poultry, too. Our link goes to horses because girls like them best.

Buffalo (Bison) Education from the InterTribal Bison Cooperative. From the original people of the bison comes this excellent educational resource. Learn the Traditional Uses of the Buffalo with a comprehensive printable .pdf chart. Learn why Buffalo Are Sacred. Learn buffalo facts and the Historical and Cultural Connection to the Buffalo. Find out about buffalo Meat & Nutrition. Play the Buffalo Brain Busters game.

Butser Ancient Farm Iron Age farm animals. Lots of photos and info about ancient farm animals from all over Europe that are kept at Butser. Many are endangered. These are the same breeds that ancient farmers kept thousands of years ago. To see the animals, go to the right-hand side of the page, go down to the button that says Animals, and click it.

Butterfly Guide Captain's European Butterfly Guide " A Photographic Guide to Europe's Butterflies" has photos and info on butterflies of the UK, rest of Europe, and North Africa. Great resource, many photos.

Butterfly Utopia is a commercial site offering mounted butterflies.  Obviously not in their natural state, but the photos are beautiful!  Twelve pages with 21 different butterflies per page.  Has some info about each. Excellent source for photos and species names.

Butterfly Website has photos of butterflies and caterpillars worldwide, arranged by families. Also has links to other butterfly sites.

Monarch Butterfly photos from fohn.net. Good natural photos of monarch butterflies with more info on each page.

Zoom Butterflies is all about butterflies and moths, species, pictures, a dictionary, lots of printables and activities for kids.

Camel Spiders are not true spiders. Related to spiders and scorpions, 900 known species of wind scorpions, sun spiders and camel spiders live in deserts worldwide. Site also has some really hairy scary photos of camel spiders in places from Arizona to Iraq.

Canine Corner from the San Diego Natural History Museum. Woof! "Discover domestic dogs and their wild cousins. Bite-sized facts about dogs and wild dogs!" Also has a glossary and links.

Here's the fierce dog and her duck!

Carolina Wild Dogs are North America's original native dogs! These tough, shy survivors may be related to Australian Dingoes. They can still be found in wild places in the southeast US. There are other primitive "yellow dogs"and "pariah dogs" still holding out in obscure places worldwide. They may be the wild ancestors of many of our modern dog breeds.

Cat Breed Profiles from CatChannel.  Information on many breeds of house cats, including photos and what makes each breed special.

Cat Species  Photos and information about 36 wild cat species (around 50 or so exist). Everything from lions and tigers to Borneo Bay Cats and Kodkods. Also has links to sites that work to save endangered wild cats.  From CatChannel.

Cicada molting video actually a short animated gif of a cicada climbing out of its shell and sprouting wings. Neat. Watch how the wings expand and harden.

Cnidarians: Simple Animals with a Sting!  Good, easy to read information about jellyfish, coral, sea anemones, and hydroids.  Now part of a larger site, Wonders of the Sea. 

Cnidarians from UMich's Animal Diversity Web. Higher-level information on the two types of cnidarians. (pronounced "nai-dare-ee-yans", the "c" is silent)

Dragonflies! Incredible dragonfly photos! Fantastic close ups of these colorful prehistoric survivors.

Eco-Focus from Ecology Asia. This fine Singapore site has photos and data for 300 different animals from Singapore and New Guinea. Perfect for those school animal reports.

Eagle Cams from Hancock Wildlife in British Columbia. Three live webcams of bald eagles' nests with eggs and chicks! They also have a Biology Reference section with information about bald eagles and their nesting habits. Obviously these are seasonal.

Elephant Odyssey Be a baby mammoth! "On this journey through time, you'll learn the ways of mammoths and their modern day descendants, the elephants. - So let's go back 200,000 years and test your skills." Mother Mammoth trains you in the basic skills, including keyboard commands. You get three lives. Good luck! From the San Diego Zoo's new Elephant Odyssey exhibit.

eNature Field Guides   "Search more than 5,500 species." Guides for animals and plants, too. Good information. This site is rich in ads as well as in information, so don't let kids be too "quick to click."

Encyclopedia of Life "Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth..." STUNNING new project from a group including the likes of Harvard University, the Field Museum, and the Smithsonian! Students and seekers of any age can type in the name of any living thing and (usually) see pictures and information! We had fun putting in names of plants, animals, and bacteria. Still a work in progress - had velociraptor pix and data, but nothing on Tyrannosaurus rex. Also has groups to join and ways you can help.

Endangered Species - World Wildlife Fund Part of larger site. Links to endangered animals on the left side of the page.

Endangered species Excellent endangered species site with a lot of information. Links to similar sites and a map to click on to see endangered species in your (US) state.

Exmoor Pony  Learn about this Ice Age survivor, the oldest breed of horse in the UK, which lived wild for 60,000 years.

exZOOberance - Celebrating the Animal Kingdom! A good site for learning about plants and animals, with backyard tours.

Hall of Mammals One of the many, many entrances into UC Berkeley's truly immense web site about living things from the beginning of life on earth until now. This one starts off by explaining about the different types of mammals and their close (long extinct) relatives; who together make up the synapsids.

The Horse From the American Museum of Natural History. We hope they keep this site up past January! Anything you want to know about horses, ancient and modern, it's likely to be here. Beautiful pictures, too.

Hummingbird Pictures Guide  Scroll down to see photos and information on 38 species of hummingbirds.

Insect Image Gallery from Iowa State University's Dept. of Entomology has photos of most kinds of insects, with information on them.

International Wolf Center The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wild lands and the human role in their future. The Learn page has areas for children (activities and reading), educators, and wolf facts.  Ambassador Wolves has bios of the wolves, updated regularly. Each update includes a short video. Click "Video Link" under each entry to watch the videos.  You can also watch three webcams of the wolf preserve.

Invertebrate Notes (new URL - 9/2009) is a good intro to the major invertebrate phyla (but no water bears!) with a lot of clear and readable information.

Jellyfish Facts "Jellyfish Facts aims to provide information about jellyfish, helping people to understand these beautiful and interesting creatures. We have 6 sections, including Jellyfish Species List, Photo Gallery, and Jellyfish as Pets. Check us out!" We did. "Jellyfish Nate" is obviously fascinated by jellyfish, or jellies, as some now call them. Anything you want or need to know about them is on this well organized site. Even eating them, which is good because they're taking over much of the oceans.

Kid Activities from the Ettamogah Wildlife Sanctuary in NSW, Australia.  Naturally they feature Australian animals!  Coloring, printouts, info, a letters page for kids to send in their artwork.

KidWings "This site was designed to teach young and old about the wonders of birds. The most exciting part of the site is the Virtual Owl Pellet Dissection. Many interactive activities await you." Also features section on bird skulls, nests, feathers, beaks, feet, and "topography" for birders. Fun!

Lily the Bear! North American Bear Center now featuring Lily the Black Bear and Den Cam! Lily's taking the net by storm, with her own Facebook page and millions of Friends. "Three-year-old Lily may have her first set of cubs in January." Everybody's waiting to see! Lily is just one in the line of bears studied by the good people in Ely, Minnesota. Check out the rest of the site, too. Note: If the cam does not work with Firefox, try Internet Explorer.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Webcams  Six great webcams of sea creatures!  We like them all, but the Outer Bay cam is simply astounding.

Moth Life Cycle  AMAZING photo series of the life cycle of the giant cecropia moth from eggs to adults. It includes wonderful closeups of caterpillar stages, including photos of the moth developing inside the cocoon! Definitely educational!

Mountain Lion Facts  Safety tips for what to do to discourage attacks by mountain lions. Sound advice from the Mountain Lion Foundation.

National Geographic Kids "Features different people, animals, and places each month with facts, games, activities, and related links." Well, hey, it's National Geographic.  Very educational, and the games are fun, too.

Netfrog The original frog dissection online site from U of Virginia. Now with the old-time (1994) version AND a newer more multimedia version. It's like two for one good sites! Also see the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's Virtual Frog Dissection Kit "This award-winning interactive program is part of the 'Whole Frog' project. You can interactively dissect a (digitized) frog named Fluffy, and play the Virtual Frog Builder Game." Your choice as to which site is better for your kids.

North American Bear Center now featuring Lily the Black Bear and Den Cam! Lily's taking the net by storm, with her own Facebook page and millions of Friends. "Three-year-old Lily may have her first set of cubs in January." Everybody's waiting to see! Lily is just one in the line of bears studied by the good people in Ely, Minnesota. Check out the rest of the site, too. Note: As of Jan 2010, the den cam does not work with Firefox, and the plugin needed is hard to get and quite buggy. Works OK with Internet Explorer 8.

Ocean Collection for Kids This is a group of ocean sites for kids put together by faculty from Cal state LA. They cover ocean habitats, ocean mammals, and ocean fish. This is for elementary kids and has good simple explanations.

Owl Pellet Dissection from KidWings features virtual own pellet dissection with Flash, also addition diisection activities with eight owls and three other birds.

Panda Videos from the Atlanta Zoo. These are archival videos and plenty of them, featuring cute pandas.  Further down, there are more videos of other zoo animals. We have been running these in QuickTime.  Parents and teachers: Remember to have the kids close each window as they finish watching that video.  Otherwise you will have 10 or 20 videos still running in background, and a very slow computer.

Raptor Adaptations from the Delaware Valley Raptor Center. How do hawks, eagles, and their kin do the things they do so well?  Information on raptor feet, beaks, eyes, and wings. (Scroll down a little past the poem)

Red List of Threatened Species "Life on Earth is disappearing fast and will continue to do so unless urgent action is taken. There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction, up from 16,118 last year." Search the Red List for animals, birds, and plants here.

San Diego Zoo Animal Bytes has animal facts, sounds, photos, videos, ecosystems, and habitats!  Videos need Real Player.

San Diego Zoo Kids Territory has online games, crafts, Meet the Critters, and more!

Sci4Kids: stories about bugs. "Stories! Stories! Stories!" Tons of fun facts about "bugs!"

Scorpions and their relatives.  Photos sent in from all over the world. Each "bug" is identified and discussed.  Part of a larger site.

Shamu Cam Watch Shamu the Orca live.

Shark Attack - How to Avoid being attacked.  Practical advice for all ages.

Zoom Sharks! Maybe the very best shark place for kids! But then, all the Zoom sites and activities are wonderful.

Shark Classification from The Dedicated Shark Site. Good information and plenty of it, with pictures of plenty of sharks, anatomy lesson, and a list of more sharks than you ever dreamed existed. Good job!

Shark School from the San Diego Natural History Museum. "Swim among some local sharks! Angle your way through fish and games. Explore ten shark species found in the waters off of southern California and northern Baja California." Shark FAQ's, anatomy, links, more.

Shark - Who's Who of Sharks  Find out all about your favorite shark!  Shark species arranged by their eight orders, or check the Species List, or try the Shark-a-Matic. From PBS Nova.

Shark Word Search from Florida Museum of Natural History.  Easy to use. Needs javascript to run.

Shedd Educational Adventures (SEA) from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Lesson Plans, Interactives, and the Explorer's Guide! Interactives are the online learning games, indexed by grade level. We tried Build a Fish and it was fun!

Snail biology  Everything you ever wanted to know about snails. Written at a secondary school level.

Snow Leopards for Kids " In it you will find answers to your questions about snow leopards. You will find photos and videos of snow leopards. You will also find suggestions for things you can do to help save snow leopards. We are also working on a section of “snow leopardy” things to do that are just, plain fun...We are proud to receive the MyReportLinks.com Book Seal of Approval awarded to sites that are especially valuable to students who are doing research for school reports." (Emphasis ours)

Spiders! This is a nice spider unit for lower elementary kids, with lesson plans ready to go.

Splash Zone! is another part of Monterey Bay Aquarium. Scroll down to play Crunch Nibble Gulp Bite or Make a Tide Pool Come to Life. Also check out the links to more wonderful places, on the left side of the page.

Switcheroo Zoo 146 animals! Animal List and Profiles. (Profiles are information about the animal.) "These animals inhabit Switch Zoo. Click any name to read the animal's profile. Make new animals in Switch Zoo by switching the animals' heads, legs and tails." Cute!

Turkey Facts from KidZone. Plenty of facts, online puzzles, and coloring pages to print out.

Water Bears Also known as Tardigrades, these microscopic creatures are the toughest multicelled animals ever, able to withstand outer space, boiling, freezing, and radiation! They are also kind of cute. This site tells about them in easy to understand language.

WhoZoo from Texas Wesleyan University is our newest animal site. It's taking over from the late great AmericaZoo on our pages. (Go to the old AmericaZoo URL and guess who's there? Yep, The Blonde With The Backpack!) WhoZoo is easy to use, has animals organized into orders (mammals, birds,...) and has short, readable information on each animal.

WildWatchcams from Washington State. Web cams and animal blogs about eagles and five other birds, plus bats, salmon, and seals!

Wolf Haven International is a wolf sanctuary in Washington State. Their Basic Wolf Info section has a ton of information about wolves, perfect for elementary or middle school research! They also discuss wolf-dog hybrids. They also have a good small section on the prairie plants and animals around them, as well as a bio section with information on their wolves.

Wolf Sanctuary is located in Colorado. They rescue abused or neglected captive wolves and wolf-dog hybrids, nurse them back to health, and give them large wooded areas in which they roam freely. If you're looking for an wild animal charity that could use your help, look no further.  Isabeau is the "Poster Child" of Wolf Sanctuary. This girl is worth reading about all by herself!  More photos here.  Note: this is not a tourist attraction, nor are they normally set up to receive visitors. Please, always contact the Sanctuary FIRST if planning a visit.

 Wolf Quest from the Minnesota Zoo and EduWeb comes this excellent download wolf simulation game. Players become a wolf and explore Yellowstone Park! Kids from elementary to high school love to play this game, it's hard to get them to stop! We printed out the pdf instructions for players to use. Needs a newer computer with good graphics.

 WolfQuest Episode 2 is out! Download it! From the Minnesota Zoo and EduWeb comes this excellent download wolf simulation game. Players become a wolf and explore Yellowstone Park! Kids from elementary to high school love to play this game, it's hard to get them to stop! We printed out the enclosed instructions for players to use. Needs a newer computer with good graphics. 127 Mb download for episode 2.

Wonders of the Sea  This site is devoted to sea animals.  There are sections on sponges, cnidarians (see above), mollusks, arthropods (crustaceans, etc.), echinoderms (starfish and relatives), sharks, sperm whales, and Chessie, the Long-Distance Swimming Manatee!  Good and concise on what it covers.

Zoo Cams! (new URL) This German site has a big list of Zoo Cams around the world. All kinds of animals, live on camera. Includes several Panda Cams and the Giraffe Cam at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Zoo List Kids World's big list of zoo sites is on this page. More Kids World sites are in our General Interest section.

to top of page to Good Sites!Powered by World's #1 Web Host 

Good Dogs, 1972 - 2006