200+ Animals That Start With E With Pictures

Every autumn, European eels leave the rivers they grew up in and swim four thousand miles to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. Their young drift back on the Gulf Stream, taking three years to arrive.

Animals that start with E run to extremes like that. The elephant outweighs every other land animal, the echidna lays eggs despite being a mammal, and the electric eel generates 800 volts without being an eel at all.

Elephants and eagles come first, then the ones nobody expects.

List Of Animals That Start With E

Common Animals That Start With E

Twelve of these you already know. Each earns its place through something you can watch it do, which makes them the quickest way into the letter.

Elephant

Three species share the name, not two. The IUCN split the African forest elephant from the African bush elephant in 2021, and the Asian elephant makes the third. Bush elephants are the largest land animals alive, reaching four metres at the shoulder and six tonnes.

The trunk packs around 40,000 muscles and no bone at all. It works as a nose, an arm, a hose and a loudspeaker, and a calf takes most of a year to learn to control one.

Echidna

Only two kinds of mammal on earth lay eggs, and the echidna is one of them. The platypus is the other. A female lays a single leathery egg straight into her pouch, where it hatches after about ten days into a young echidna the size of a jellybean.

Spines cover the back, and the snout uses electroreceptors that pick up the faint electrical signals of ants and termites moving underground.

Elk

Ask for an elk in Colorado and you get a wapiti. Ask in Sweden and you get a moose. The word means two different deer on two continents, which is the single most confusing animal name in English.

Cows and calves live in herds through most of the year. Bulls join them only for the autumn rut, when the bugling call reaches across whole valleys.

Calling the North American animal an elk while speaking to a European ❌
Saying wapiti for the American deer and elk for the moose ✅

Emu

Second only to the ostrich among living birds, the emu stands close to two metres and runs at 50 km/h across Australian scrub. It cannot fly, and the wings have shrunk to about twenty centimetres.

The male does everything after laying. He incubates the dark green eggs for eight weeks without eating, drinking or leaving the nest, losing a third of his body weight. Then he raises the chicks alone for eighteen months.

• Eagle: eyesight several times sharper than yours, and a golden eagle spots a hare two kilometres off.
• Eel: born in the Sargasso Sea, then drifting years across the Atlantic before entering European rivers.
• Egret: white heron that hunts by standing still, and plume hunting nearly wiped it out by 1900.
• Earthworm: turns over tonnes of soil per hectare every year, which is why Darwin spent his last forty years studying earthworms rather than finches.
• Earwig: pincers that threaten rather than pinch.
• Emperor penguin: the only bird that breeds through the Antarctic winter, huddling in thousands at minus 40 degrees.
• Elephant seal: males reach four tonnes and dive past 1,500 metres, and a single breath lasts two hours.
• Eurasian lynx: Europe’s largest cat, ear-tufted and bob-tailed, hunting roe deer alone through forest.

Mammals That Start With E

Twenty-five more mammals begin with E, and the European- and Eurasian- prefixes account for half of them.

• Eland: the largest antelope alive, and a bull weighing a tonne still clears a two-metre fence from standing.
• Elephant shrew: neither elephant nor shrew, but closer on the family tree to elephants than to any shrew.
• Ermine: the stoat in winter, its coat turning white except for a black tail tip that stays black all year round.
• Eastern gorilla: the largest living primate, and Critically Endangered across the eastern Congo highlands.
• Eastern grey kangaroo: grazes in mobs across eastern Australia.
• Eastern chipmunk: stuffs cheek pouches until the head doubles in width, then empties them underground.
• Eastern cottontail: North America’s most widespread rabbit, breeding fast enough to absorb heavy predation.
• Eastern mole: almost blind, digging at fifteen metres an hour through a life spent underground.
• Eastern quoll: spotted marsupial carnivore, extinct on mainland Australia since 1963 and surviving only in Tasmania.
• Eastern spotted skunk: does a handstand before spraying, forelegs off the ground and tail straight up.
• Eastern pygmy possum: small enough to sit in a matchbox, and it feeds on nectar and pollen.
• Eurasian beaver: hunted to about 1,200 animals by 1900, now back across Europe in the hundreds of thousands.
• Eurasian otter: hunts by touch with stiff whiskers in water too dark to see through.
• Eurasian red squirrel: ear tufts in winter.
• Eurasian badger: digs setts that pass down through generations, some running to thirty chambers.
• European bison: rebuilt from twelve captive animals after 1927, and Europe’s heaviest land mammal.
• European hedgehog: wears around 5,000 spines and rolls into a ball that a fox cannot open.
• European hare: boxing in spring is a doe fighting off a buck, not two bucks fighting.
• European rabbit: the ancestor of every domestic breed, and native only to Iberia.
• European mink: rarer than the giant panda, and still declining across its shrinking range.
• European polecat: the wild ancestor of the ferret, masked and mostly nocturnal.
• European wildcat: looks like a heavy tabby, with a blunt ringed tail that tells it apart.
• Edible dormouse: sleeps seven months a year and was fattened in jars by the Romans for the table.
• Epauletted fruit bat: males flash white shoulder patches while calling all night for a mate.
• Egyptian jerboa: hops on hind legs twice its body length, crossing desert sand without sinking.

Birds That Start With E

Twenty birds begin with E, and the smallest of them weighs less than a golf ball.

• Elf owl: the world’s smallest owl at 40 grams, nesting in old woodpecker holes in saguaro cactus.
• Eider: the down from her breast insulates the nest, and it is the warmest natural insulation known.
• Eagle owl: a two-metre wingspan and orange eyes, taking prey as large as a young fox.
• Egyptian vulture: cracks ostrich eggs by throwing stones at them, one of few birds using a tool.
• Egyptian goose: ancient Egyptians painted it on tomb walls, and it now breeds wild across southern England.
• Emerald toucanet: small green toucan.
• Eclectus parrot: males are bright green and females deep red, a difference so extreme that they were once described as two species.
• Eurasian eagle-owl: among the largest owls alive, and it takes hares, herons and other owls.
• Eurasian hoopoe: raises a fan of a crest on landing, and the chicks spray an oily deterrent when threatened.
• Eurasian skylark: sings continuously while climbing, and a single flight song runs half an hour.
• Eurasian jay: buries several thousand acorns each autumn and plants more oak trees than any forester.
• European robin: defends a winter territory and will sing through the night beside a street lamp.
• European bee-eater: catches bees in flight and rubs the sting out against a branch before swallowing.
• Elegant tern: nests in dense colonies on a handful of Mexican islands and almost nowhere else.
• Elepaio: a Hawaiian flycatcher that canoe builders once watched, since it pecked at wood already rotten.

Sea Animals That Start With E

Twenty-two sea animals begin with E, and the most famous of them is misnamed.

Electric eel

Not an eel. The electric eel is a knifefish, order Gymnotiformes, and Smithsonian’s National Zoo puts it closer to catfish and carp than to any true eel. It reaches 2 to 2.5 metres in the rivers of South America.

Three organs down the body work as living batteries, and a full discharge runs to 800 volts. It also has to breathe air, surfacing every ten minutes or so through a mouth lined with folded blood-rich tissue.

• Eagle ray: flaps rather than glides, and a spotted eagle ray clears the surface in a full jump.
• Epaulette shark: walks across dry reef on its fins and survives an hour without oxygen.
• Emperor angelfish: the juvenile wears blue and white rings and looks nothing like the striped adult.
• Emperor shrimp: rides on the back of a sea cucumber and rides wherever the host goes.
• Escolar: oily enough that several countries ban the sale, since the wax esters pass straight through.
• Eulachon: so rich in oil that dried fish were once lit as candles the length of the Pacific Northwest coast.
• European eel: Critically Endangered, and its numbers have fallen by over 90 percent since 1980.
• European conger: three metres of true eel living in Atlantic wrecks, and by weight the largest eel in any European water.
• European lobster: blue in the water, red only after cooking, and it can live past fifty years.
• European seabass: silver, prized, and slow-growing enough that stocks recover badly from overfishing.
• Electric ray: stuns prey with a shock, and Roman doctors used one on a patient’s head for headaches.
• Eelpout: antifreeze in the blood.
• Echinoderm: the group of starfish, urchins and sea cucumbers, built on five-part symmetry.
• European flounder: both eyes migrate to one side of the head as the young fish settles flat.
• Eel catfish: hunts beetles on land, arching its body to pin prey outside the water entirely.

Reptiles And Amphibians With E

Twelve reptiles and amphibians begin with E, and the first two are among the most venomous animals in their regions.

• Eastern brown snake: responsible for most snakebite deaths in Australia, and fast across open ground.
• Eastern diamondback rattlesnake: the heaviest venomous snake in the Americas at over four kilograms.
• Eastern coral snake: red touching yellow, and the venom works on nerves rather than tissue.
• Eyelash viper: raised scales above each eye form the lashes, and the colour runs from gold to green.
• Emerald tree boa: hangs in coils over a branch and strikes down at birds passing beneath.
• Estuarine crocodile: the largest living reptile, past six metres, and it swims open ocean between islands.
• Egyptian tortoise: Critically Endangered, and one of the smallest tortoises alive at ten centimetres.
• Eastern box turtle: a hinged shell closes it away completely, and wild ones pass a century.
• Edible frog: fertile hybrid of two other frog species, which is unusual enough to puzzle taxonomists.
• Eastern newt: passes a middle stage as a bright orange eft, walking about on land for up to three whole years.
• European fire salamander: black with yellow warning blotches, and the female gives birth to live larvae straight into a cold running stream.
• Ensatina: lungless, breathing through skin.

Insects And Spiders With E

Ten invertebrates begin with E, and two of them deliver the worst stings in their class.

• Executioner wasp: the sting rates among the most painful recorded anywhere in the insect world.
• Emperor scorpion: one of the largest scorpions alive, and its sting is mild despite the size.
• Emperor dragonfly: takes butterflies in mid-air.
• Elephant hawk-moth: pink and olive, and the caterpillar rears up with false eyespots to bluff a bird.
• Elephant beetle: horned rhinoceros beetle from Central America, reaching twelve centimetres.
• Eastern dobsonfly: males grow mandibles longer than the head, useless for biting and used for display.
• European corn borer: a moth larva that costs North American growers a billion dollars a year.
• Eucalyptus longhorn beetle: bores into stressed eucalyptus and has spread wherever the trees were planted.
• Earwig: hindwings fold forty times over to fit beneath wing cases a quarter of their open span.
• Emu wren: not an insect at all, though people mistake it for one at distance, since its six tail feathers look like emu plumes.

Wild Animals That Start With E

Twelve larger wild animals begin with E, and the rarest dog in the world is among them.

Ethiopian wolf

Fewer than 500 survive, which makes this the rarest canid on earth. All of them live above 3,000 metres in six isolated pockets of the Ethiopian highlands, and the largest population numbers fewer than 250 animals.

It hunts alone through the day, taking giant molerats and grass rats, then returns to a pack that dens and raises pups together. Rabies carried by domestic dogs kills more of them than anything else.

• Eastern lowland gorilla: the largest gorilla subspecies, down sharply through decades of conflict in the Congo.
• Emperor tamarin: a white moustache long enough to drape past the shoulders, named after a German emperor.
• Eurasian wolf: most widespread of all wolf subspecies, ranging from Portugal to the Russian far east and across most of what lies between.
• Eurasian lynx: put back into several European countries after being shot out.
• European wildcat: genetically swamped by domestic cats across much of its range.
• Egyptian jackal: now known to be an African golden wolf, reclassified after genetic work in 2011.
• Eastern barred bandicoot: declared extinct in the wild across Victoria, then returned by fenced reintroduction and now breeding outside the fences again.
• Euro kangaroo: common wallaroo, stocky and built for rocky country rather than open plain.
• Ethiopian highland hare: known from few specimens.
• Eastern imperial eagle: breeding on lowland steppe, and Vulnerable across its European range.

Farm And Pet Animals With E

Ten domestic animals and breeds begin with E, and England supplies most of them.

• English springer spaniel: bred to flush game from cover, and it works ahead of the gun rather than behind.
• English cocker spaniel: smaller than the springer, and named for flushing woodcock.
• English bulldog: flattened faces bring breathing trouble, and breed standards have shifted in response.
• English setter: freckled coat, and it freezes on point with one foreleg raised.
• English pointer: built for speed across open ground, and a good one quarters a field faster than any other gundog.
• English foxhound: bred to run in a pack for hours at a steady pace.
• English longhorn cattle: curved horns sweeping down beside the face, and a breed that nearly died out by 1980.
• English angora rabbit: wool grows so fast it needs grooming every few days or it mats solid.
• Eskimo dog: Greenland sled breed.
• Entlebucher mountain dog: the smallest of the four Swiss mountain dogs, bred to drive cattle.

How To Pronounce E Animal Names

Several of these names trip you up on sight, because the stress lands where you would not expect it. Say the capitalised part louder.

Two of these catch almost everybody. Echidna drops its opening E to a short i, so it starts like itch. And egret takes a long first vowel, which is why EE-gret is right and EGG-ret is not.

Names borrowed whole from another language give the most trouble across the alphabet. That is why okapi and oryx catch people out among the animals with O.

Surprising Facts About E Animals

Every figure here comes from a documented measurement rather than an estimate.

• Largest land animal: African bush elephants reach four metres at the shoulder and six tonnes.
• Highest voltage: electric eels discharge up to 800 volts, more than any other animal.
• Only egg-laying mammals: echidnas and the platypus, and nothing else.
• Deepest seal dive: elephant seals work past 1,500 metres on a single breath lasting two hours.
• Rarest dog: fewer than 500 Ethiopian wolves survive, all of them above 3,000 metres.
• Smallest owl: elf owls weigh 40 grams.
• Longest fast: male emus sit on the nest for eight weeks without eating or drinking, losing a third of their weight.
• Second-largest bird: only the ostrich grows taller than an emu.
• Warmest natural insulation: eider down.
• Longest migration for a fish: European eels cross the Atlantic from the Sargasso Sea and back to spawn once.

Endangered Animals That Start With E

Five of these species are threatened, and the status behind each comes from its current Red List assessment.

• Ethiopian wolf: fewer than 500 left across six mountain pockets, and rabies from domestic dogs kills more of them than anything else.
• Eastern gorilla: decades of conflict and poaching across the eastern Congo have left it Critically Endangered.
• European eel: numbers down more than 90 percent since 1980, which puts it at Critically Endangered.
• Egyptian tortoise: Critically Endangered, all but gone from Egypt.
• Eastern barred bandicoot: brought back from extinct in the wild by fenced sanctuaries in Victoria, and one of very few mammals ever to reverse that status.

Animals That Start With E For Kids

Younger children learn the letter fastest through animals they can picture straight away. Start with these eight.

• Elephant: the biggest animal on land, with a long trunk and big flappy ears.
• Eagle: flies high and sees a long way.
• Emu: tall bird from Australia that runs fast and cannot fly.
• Eel: long and wriggly like a snake, but it is a fish.
• Echidna: covered in spines, and it lays an egg like a bird does even though it is a mammal.
• Egret: a tall white bird that stands very still in the water and waits for a fish to swim past its feet.
• Earthworm: it burrows in the soil and helps the garden grow.
• Earwig: little pincers on the back.

Say each name out loud and press the E at the front. Eagle and elephant come easiest to a young ear, since both name an animal a child has already met in a picture book.

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