Animals That Start With D: 20 Animals From Deer to Dugong

Deer

Deer are hoofed mammals native to the Americas, Europe, Asia and northwestern Africa, and people have introduced them to Australia and New Zealand. Males of almost every species grow and shed a new set of bony antlers each year; female reindeer grow antlers too, while the Chinese water deer has tusks instead. Deer range from the tiny pudus of South America, the smallest deer, to the moose, the largest.

Desert tortoise

The desert tortoise lives in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It spends most of its life in burrows and rock shelters, hiding from summer heat and winter cold, and is most active after seasonal rains. It grows slowly, can live for many decades and breeds slowly, which makes declines hard to reverse. The IUCN lists it as Critically Endangered.

Desman

Desmans are small, semiaquatic relatives of moles with long, flexible snouts shaped like a tiny trunk, which is why the Pyrenean desman is also called the “trumpet rat”. It lives in clean mountain streams of the Pyrenees and northwestern Spain and Portugal, hunting insect larvae underwater. Its cousin, the Russian desman, lives in the Volga, Don and Ural river basins. The Pyrenean desman is Endangered and the Russian desman Critically Endangered.

Dhole

The dhole, or Asian wild dog, is a reddish canid of the forests of South, East and Southeast Asia. Dholes live and hunt in packs and keep in touch with whistling calls, which earned them the name “whistling dog”, and a pack can bring down deer far larger than any single dhole. Fewer than 2,500 mature adults remain, and the species is Endangered.

Diamondback rattlesnake

The eastern diamondback rattlesnake of the southeastern United States is the largest rattlesnake and one of the heaviest venomous snakes in the Americas, with record specimens about 2.4 m (8 ft) long. The western diamondback lives in the southwestern US and northern Mexico. Both warn intruders with a buzzing rattle made of loose, interlocking segments; a new segment is added each time the snake sheds its skin. A bite needs emergency medical help immediately: call 911.

Dik-dik

Dik-diks are tiny antelopes of eastern and southwestern Africa, standing only about 30–40 cm (12–15.5 in) at the shoulder and weighing 3–6 kg (6.6–13.2 lb). Their name copies the whistling “dik-dik” alarm call that females give when they sense danger. They usually live in pairs that defend a small territory together, marking its borders with dung piles and scent.

Dingo

The dingo is a wild dog of Australia, descended from domestic dogs that arrived with people; the oldest dingo remains found there are about 3,500 years old. Dingoes rarely bark but howl to keep in contact. The Dingo Fence, built to keep them out of sheep country in the southeast, stretches about 5,614 km (3,488 mi) and is one of the longest structures in the world.

Dodo

The dodo was a large, flightless pigeon that lived only on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Hunting by sailors and the animals they brought, such as rats, pigs and monkeys, wiped it out within a few decades of its discovery; the last widely accepted sighting was in 1662. Its closest living relative is the colorful Nicobar pigeon of Southeast Asia.

Dog

The domestic dog descends from wolves and was the first animal domesticated by people, more than 14,000 years ago, before the invention of farming. Today there are hundreds of breeds, from the tiny Chihuahua to the Great Dane. A dog’s sense of smell is far keener than ours, which is why dogs are trained to search for people trapped after earthquakes and avalanches.

Dogfish

Dogfish are small sharks. The spiny dogfish of cool coastal waters has a mildly venomous spine in front of each of its two dorsal fins and one of the longest pregnancies of any animal, lasting about 18–24 months before the female gives birth to live pups. Once one of the most abundant sharks, it has declined because of overfishing and is listed as Vulnerable.

Dolphin

Dolphins are toothed whales, with about 40 species living in oceans and a few large rivers; the orca is the largest member of the dolphin family. They find prey by echolocation, sending out clicks and listening for the echoes, and they rest one half of the brain at a time so they can keep surfacing to breathe. Bottlenose dolphins use individual signature whistles that work much like names; see dolphin vs shark for how they differ from look-alike fish.

Donkey

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in northeastern Africa some 5,000–7,000 years ago and is still a vital working animal, with more than 40 million donkeys worldwide. Its loud “hee-haw” helps donkeys keep in touch over long distances; read why do donkeys bray? for the full story. A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.

Dormouse

Dormice are small, bushy-tailed rodents of Europe, Africa and Asia, famous for their long winter sleep. The hazel dormouse of Europe usually hibernates from about October to April or May, curled up in a nest on the ground. The larger edible dormouse was fattened in clay jars as a delicacy by the ancient Romans. In Britain the hazel dormouse has declined and is legally protected.

Dove

Doves and pigeons belong to the same bird family, and there is no strict scientific difference between them; smaller species tend to be called doves. The mourning dove is one of the most common birds in North America, and the rock dove is the ancestor of city pigeons. The passenger pigeon, once numbering around 3 billion, went extinct when the last one, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Dragonfly

Dragonflies are expert flying hunters, with about 3,000 species worldwide. Each of their huge compound eyes has nearly 24,000 tiny lenses, giving almost all-round vision, and they catch most of the insects they chase. Their young, called nymphs, live underwater for months or even years before climbing out to become adults. To tell them from their slimmer cousins, see dragonfly vs damselfly.

Drill

The drill is a short-tailed African monkey closely related to the mandrill. It lives in rainforests of southeastern Nigeria, southwestern Cameroon and the island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea. Males have a black face framed by pale fur and a brightly colored rump. Hunting for bushmeat and forest loss have made it one of Africa’s most threatened monkeys, and it is listed as Endangered.

Dromedary

The dromedary, or one-humped camel, was probably domesticated in the Arabian Peninsula about 4,000 years ago and no longer lives naturally in the wild. It can survive losing more than 30% of its body water, which lets it cross deserts where few other large animals can live. A large feral population roams the Australian outback; read why are there camels in Australia? to find out how they got there.

Drongo

Drongos are glossy black songbirds of Africa, Asia and Australia, many with deeply forked tails. The fork-tailed drongo of southern Africa is a master of deception. It gives genuine alarm calls when predators approach, but sometimes it sounds a false alarm, even imitating the warning calls of meerkats, so that other animals flee and leave their food behind for the drongo to steal.

Duck

Ducks are waterbirds with broad, flat bills and webbed feet, found on every continent except Antarctica. The mallard is the ancestor of most domestic duck breeds. Ducks keep their feathers waterproof with oil from a gland near the tail, and newly hatched ducklings follow the first moving object they see, normally their mother, in a process called imprinting.

Dugong

The dugong is a large marine mammal of warm coastal waters from East Africa to Australia, related to manatees and, more distantly, to elephants. It feeds almost entirely on seagrass, which is why it is sometimes called a sea cow. Unlike a manatee’s paddle-shaped tail, its tail is fluked like a whale’s. Dugongs can live 70 years or more and are listed as Vulnerable.