🇿🇦 Animals of South Africa

The aardvark is a pig-sized burrowing mammal of sub-Saharan Africa.

The aardwolf is the smallest member of the hyena family and eats almost nothing but termites.

The African buffalo is a heavy wild ox of sub-Saharan Africa that lives in herds of dozens to thousands and must drink every day.

The African bush elephant is the largest land animal alive.

The African penguin is the only penguin that breeds on the African continent.

The African wildcat is a small striped cat of dry Africa and Asia, and the ancestor of every domestic cat.

The aurochs was the wild ox of Europe, North Africa and much of Asia, and the ancestor of domestic cattle.

The barn swallow is the most widespread swallow on earth, with a steel blue back and a deeply forked tail.

The bearded vulture is a huge mountain raptor that lives almost entirely on bone.

The black kite is a medium-sized raptor with angled wings and a forked tail.

The black rhinoceros is a two-horned browser of eastern and southern Africa with a pointed, gripping upper lip.

The black-footed cat is Africa's smallest wild cat, a spotted night hunter of the dry grasslands of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

The budgerigar is a small green and yellow parrot from the dry interior of Australia.

The caracal is a slim, long-legged cat with black ear tufts, found across Africa and from Arabia to India.

The cheetah is the fastest land animal.

The common buzzard is a broad-winged hawk of Europe and northern Asia, and the commonest bird of prey across most of that range.

The common myna is a brown starling with a black head and a bare yellow patch behind the eye, native to southern Asia.

The common ostrich is the largest and heaviest living bird and lays the largest egg.

The common starling is a glossy black songbird of Europe and Asia, spangled with white spots in winter.

The Egyptian goose is a pale brown waterbird of African rivers, lakes and grassland, marked by a dark ring around each eye.

The giraffe is the tallest land animal.

The great white shark is the largest predatory fish.

The greater flamingo is the largest and most widespread flamingo.

The grey heron is a tall grey and white wading bird of European, Asian and African wetlands.

The hippopotamus spends its days in rivers and lakes and its nights grazing on land.

The honey badger is a stocky, loose-skinned mustelid that roams Africa, Arabia and India.

The house mouse is a small grey-brown rodent that lives in and around human buildings on every inhabited continent.

The house sparrow is a small brown and grey bird that lives beside people almost everywhere on earth.

The humpback whale is a large baleen whale found in every ocean.

The Indian peafowl is the large ground bird of India and Sri Lanka, and it is India's national bird.

The king penguin is the second largest penguin, an orange-throated bird of subantarctic island beaches.

The leopard is a spotted big cat that lives across Africa and Asia in more kinds of country than any other cat.

The leopard seal is a long, spotted seal of the Antarctic pack ice that hunts penguins, seals, fish and krill.

The lion is the only cat that lives in social groups.

The meerkat is a small mongoose of the dry plains of southern Africa.

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth.

The rock hyrax is a squat, rabbit-sized mammal of African and Middle Eastern rock outcrops.

The rose-ringed parakeet is a slim green parrot with a red bill and a very long tail.

The serval is a slender African cat with the longest legs and largest ears of any cat for its size.

The southern elephant seal is the largest seal on Earth, and a bull can weigh more than four times as much as a cow.

The sperm whale is the biggest of the toothed whales and the largest predator with teeth.

The spotted hyena is Africa's most common large carnivore and a hunter first, not a scavenger.

The western honey bee lives in colonies of tens of thousands and turns nectar into honey.

The whale shark is the largest fish in the sea.

The white rhinoceros is the biggest and most social of the five living rhinos.

The white stork is a large white bird with black wings, a red bill and long red legs.