Animals That Start With C: 25 Animals From Camel to Cuttlefish

Camel

Camels are long-legged mammals built for deserts. The one-humped dromedary makes up about 94% of the world’s camels and the two-humped Bactrian camel the rest, while a separate wild Bactrian camel survives in Mongolia and China, with only around 1,000 left. A camel’s hump stores fat, not water; read what is in a camel’s hump? to learn more. Surprisingly, the camel family first evolved in North America.

Capybara

The capybara is the largest living rodent, weighing about 35–66 kg (77–146 lb). It lives in groups near rivers, lakes and marshes across most of South America, and its partly webbed toes make it a strong swimmer. When danger threatens, it slips into the water and can stay hidden below the surface for several minutes.

Caracal

The caracal is a medium-sized wild cat of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, easy to recognize by its long black ear tufts. Its name comes from Turkish words meaning “black ear”. Weighing 8–19 kg (18–42 lb), it is a superb jumper that can leap more than 3 m (10 ft) into the air to snatch birds in flight.

Cardinal

The northern cardinal is one of the best-known backyard birds of eastern North America. Males are bright red with a black face mask, while females are warm brown with red tinges on the wings and tail. Unusually for North American songbirds, both sexes sing. It is the state bird of seven US states, including Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina.

Cassowary

Cassowaries are huge flightless birds of the rainforests of New Guinea and northeastern Australia. The southern cassowary usually stands 1.5–1.8 m (4.9–5.9 ft) tall and wears a bony helmet called a casque. Each foot carries a dagger-like inner claw up to 12 cm (4.7 in) long, so cassowaries should always be given plenty of space. They swallow fruits whole and spread the seeds of many rainforest trees.

Cat

The domestic cat descends from the African wildcat and was first tamed in the Near East roughly 9,500 years ago, probably because it hunted the mice drawn to stored grain. Today there are an estimated 600 million domestic cats worldwide. Its wild cousin, the European wildcat, still lives in forests across continental Europe and in Scotland.

Centipede

Centipedes are fast, many-legged predators with one pair of legs on each body segment. Despite the name, which means “hundred feet”, no centipede has exactly 100 legs: the number of leg pairs is always odd and ranges from 15 to 191. Their first pair of legs is modified into venomous claws used to catch insects and spiders.

Chameleon

Chameleons are lizards with eyes that swivel independently and a sticky tongue that shoots out to grab insects, in some species reaching farther than the length of the body. There are about 200 species, around half of them found only in Madagascar, and the common chameleon reaches southern Europe. Their famous color changes are used mainly to signal to other chameleons and to control body temperature, not just to hide.

Cheetah

The cheetah is the fastest land animal, with top speeds of about 93–104 km/h (58–65 mph) in short sprints. It lives mainly on the savannas and dry grasslands of eastern and southern Africa, and a tiny population of Asiatic cheetahs survives in Iran. Only about 6,500 adult cheetahs remain in the wild, and the species is listed as Vulnerable.

Chicken

The chicken is the most numerous bird on Earth, with more than 26 billion alive at any one time. It was domesticated from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia thousands of years ago, and wild junglefowl still live in the forests there. Chickens can fly short distances, and like their wild ancestors they prefer to roost off the ground at night.

Chimpanzee

The chimpanzee is a great ape of the forests and woodlands of West and Central Africa and, along with the bonobo, our closest living relative. Chimps make and use tools, such as stripped twigs for fishing termites out of their mounds and stones for cracking nuts; see do chimpanzees use tools? for more. They live in communities and are listed as Endangered.

Chinchilla

Chinchillas are small rodents from the Andes of South America, named after the Chincha people who once wore their fur. They have the densest fur of any land mammal, with around 50 hairs growing from each follicle, which keeps them warm in cold mountain nights. Hunted almost to extinction for that fur, both wild species are Endangered, and only small wild colonies remain, mainly in Chile.

Chipmunk

Chipmunks are small, striped squirrels. Of the 25 species, all live in North America except the Siberian chipmunk of northern Asia. They stuff seeds and nuts into stretchy cheek pouches and carry them back to underground burrows. The eastern chipmunk spends the winter in its burrow, waking regularly to snack from its hidden food store.

Cicada

Cicadas are loud, sap-sucking insects. Males make their buzzing songs with drum-like organs called tymbals on the abdomen, and some species are among the loudest insects on Earth. The periodical cicadas of eastern North America spend 13 or 17 years underground as nymphs, then emerge together in tremendous numbers in late spring.

Clownfish

Clownfish are small, brightly colored reef fish that live among the stinging tentacles of sea anemones, protected by a layer of mucus on their skin. There are about 28 species in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Each group is led by a large breeding female; if she disappears, the breeding male changes sex and takes her place.

Cobra

Cobras are venomous snakes that rear up and spread a hood when threatened, and spitting cobras can spray venom toward the eyes of an attacker. The king cobra of South and Southeast Asia is the world’s longest venomous snake, averaging 3–4 m (10–13 ft) with a record of 5.85 m (19.2 ft), and it eats mainly other snakes. It is listed as Vulnerable. A snakebite needs emergency medical help immediately.

Coelacanth

The coelacanth is a large, deep-water fish that scientists thought had died out about 66 million years ago, until a living one was caught off South Africa in 1938. Its fleshy, limb-like fins show that it is related to the fish that gave rise to four-legged animals. The West Indian Ocean coelacanth is Critically Endangered, and a second species was discovered in Indonesia in the late 1990s.

Condor

Condors are huge vultures of the Americas. The Andean condor has a wingspan of up to about 3.3 m (10.8 ft), one of the largest of any flying bird. The California condor fell to just 27 birds in 1987, when all were taken into captivity for breeding. Thanks to reintroductions, the world population had grown to about 600 by 2025, but it remains Critically Endangered.

Cougar

The cougar has a larger range than any other wild land mammal in the Americas, from western Canada to the southern Andes. Also called the mountain lion, puma and panther, it holds the Guinness World Record for the animal with the most names, with more than 40 in English alone. It is a solitary ambush hunter that preys mainly on deer.

Cow

Cows, or cattle, were domesticated from the wild aurochs about 10,500 years ago in the Near East, and a separate domestication in South Asia produced the humped zebu. The last known aurochs died in a Polish forest in 1627. A cow’s stomach has four chambers that help it break down tough grass, and it chews its food more than once by bringing it back up as cud.

Coyote

The coyote is a wild dog of North and Central America, smaller and slimmer than the gray wolf. Few animals have adapted to people so well: since the 1800s coyotes have spread across almost the whole continent, and they now live in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. In 2013 they were recorded in eastern Panama for the first time.

Crab

Crabs are crustaceans with a hard shell, ten legs and a short tail tucked under the body, and most of them walk sideways. Thousands of species live in the sea, on beaches and in fresh water, including some 1,300 freshwater species. The Japanese spider crab has the largest leg span of any arthropod, up to about 3.7 m (12 ft) from claw to claw.

Crocodile

Crocodiles are large, semiaquatic reptiles of tropical Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. The saltwater crocodile is the largest living reptile: big males reach about 6 m (20 ft) and 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) or more. Most crocodiles have narrower, more pointed snouts than alligators; see alligator vs crocodile for the other differences.

Crow

Crows are black birds of the corvid family and among the most intelligent animals known. The American crow lives across much of North America, while carrion crows and hooded crows are common in Europe. New Caledonian crows shape twigs and leaves into hooked tools to pull insects out of holes, and studies have shown that American crows can recognize and remember individual human faces.

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish are mollusks related to squid and octopuses, with eight arms, two feeding tentacles, W-shaped pupils and three hearts. They can change the color and texture of their skin in a fraction of a second, using special skin cells to hide or to signal. An internal shell called the cuttlebone, often found washed up on European beaches, helps them control their buoyancy.