Animals That Start With P: 30 Animals From Panda to Python

Panda

The giant panda is a black-and-white bear that lives in cool, misty bamboo forests in the mountains of central China. Bamboo makes up about 99% of its diet, and an adult may eat 12–38 kg (26–84 lb) of it a day. The 2015 national survey counted 1,864 wild pandas, and the species was moved from Endangered to Vulnerable in 2016.

Pangolin

Pangolins are the only mammals covered in hard, overlapping scales made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails. The eight species live in Africa and Asia and feed on ants and termites. When threatened, they roll into a tight ball. Pangolins are thought to be the most trafficked wild mammals in the world, and three Asian species are Critically Endangered.

Panther

“Panther” is not a separate species. Black panthers are leopards in Africa and Asia, or jaguars in the Americas, with a dark melanistic coat; in good light, their spots are still visible. The Florida panther is a small population of the puma that survives in southern Florida.

Parrot

Parrots are a group of about 400 species of mostly tropical birds with strong, curved bills and feet with two toes pointing forward and two back. The group includes macaws, cockatoos, lovebirds and the flightless kakapo of New Zealand. Many are long-lived: a pink cockatoo named Cookie lived to about 83 at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago.

Peacock mantis shrimp

This colorful crustacean lives on coral reefs of the Indian and Pacific oceans. It smashes snails and crabs with club-like front limbs that strike at over 80 km/h (50 mph), one of the fastest punches in the animal world. Its eyes have around 12 kinds of color receptors, compared with three in humans.

Peafowl

Peafowl are large pheasants; the male is the peacock and the female the peahen. The Indian peafowl is the national bird of India. The male’s shimmering “tail” is really a train of long feathers that grow from the back above the true tail, and he raises and shakes it in a fan to impress females.

Pelican

Pelicans are large water birds with a stretchy throat pouch that they use like a scoop net to catch fish. There are eight species. The brown pelican of the Americas plunge-dives from the air, while most others fish while swimming. The Australian pelican holds the record for the longest bill of any living bird, at up to 50 cm (20 in).

Penguin

Penguins are flightless seabirds that “fly” underwater with stiff flippers. Most of the roughly 18 species live in the Southern Hemisphere, and only the Galápagos penguin regularly crosses north of the equator. The emperor penguin, the largest, reaches about 1 m (3.3 ft) in length and can dive deeper than 500 m (1,640 ft).

Peregrine falcon

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth, diving after birds at well over 300 km/h (186 mph); the highest measured speed is about 390 km/h (242 mph). It nests on cliffs and skyscrapers on every continent except Antarctica and has recovered strongly since the pesticide DDT was banned in many countries.

Pig

The domestic pig descends from the wild boar and was domesticated around 10,000 years ago in the Near East and separately in China. Pigs are intelligent, social animals with an excellent sense of smell. Because they have very few working sweat glands, they wallow in mud to keep cool and protect their skin from the sun.

Pigeon

Pigeons and doves form a family of about 350 species. The rock pigeon, wild ancestor of city pigeons, has a remarkable homing ability, and trained pigeons carried messages in both world wars. The passenger pigeon, once among the most numerous birds in North America, was driven extinct when the last one, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Pika

Pikas are small, round-eared relatives of rabbits that live on rocky slopes in the mountains of western North America and Asia. They do not hibernate. Instead, they spend summer gathering grasses and flowers into “haypiles” to eat during winter. The American pika is sensitive to heat and can overheat at temperatures that are only mildly warm for people.

Pileated woodpecker

The pileated woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in North America that is known to survive, about the size of a crow, with a flaming red crest. It lives in mature forests across Canada, the eastern United States and the Pacific Northwest. It chisels distinctive rectangular holes in dead trees to reach carpenter ants, its main food.

Piranha

Piranhas are sharp-toothed freshwater fish of South American rivers such as the Amazon. Their reputation for stripping animals to the bone in seconds is greatly exaggerated: the red-bellied piranha often eats insects, fish, plants and carrion, and it gathers in shoals mainly for protection from its own predators. Bites on people are uncommon.

Platypus

The platypus of eastern Australia and Tasmania is one of only five living mammals that lay eggs. It hunts underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed, finding prey by sensing the tiny electric fields of their muscles through its rubbery bill. Males have a venomous spur on each hind ankle, and the species is listed as Near Threatened.

Poison dart frog

Poison dart frogs are small, brightly colored frogs of Central and South American rainforests. Their colors warn predators of the toxins in their skin, which they obtain from the ants and mites they eat. The golden poison frog of Colombia is one of the most toxic animals on Earth, but frogs raised on a different diet in captivity are not poisonous.

Polar bear

The polar bear is the largest land carnivore, with adult males usually weighing 350–700 kg (770–1,540 lb). It lives around the Arctic Ocean and hunts seals from the sea ice. Under its white-looking fur, which is actually made of transparent hairs, its skin is black. It is listed as Vulnerable because warming is shrinking the sea ice it needs.

Porcupine

Porcupines are large rodents protected by sharp quills. The North American porcupine, the continent’s second-largest rodent after the beaver, carries about 30,000 quills. Contrary to a popular myth, porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills simply detach easily when touched.

Porpoise

Porpoises are small toothed whales, usually shorter and stockier than dolphins, with blunt snouts and spade-shaped teeth. The harbor porpoise is common in cool coastal waters of the North Atlantic and North Pacific. The vaquita of Mexico’s Gulf of California is the rarest marine mammal on Earth, with only around ten left.

Portuguese man o’ war

The Portuguese man o’ war looks like a jellyfish but is a colony of many specialized individuals working as one. A gas-filled float with a crest-like sail carries it across warm seas, while its stinging tentacles can trail up to 30 m (100 ft) below. Its stings are very painful; anyone stung who feels unwell should seek emergency medical help (call 911 in the US or 112 in the EU).

Prairie dog

Prairie dogs are burrowing ground squirrels of the Great Plains of North America. They live in large colonies called towns, and one Texas town reported around 1900 covered about 64,000 km² (25,000 sq mi) and held an estimated 400 million animals. Their alarm calls are remarkably complex and differ depending on the type of predator approaching.

Praying mantis

Mantises are ambush predators that wait motionless with their spiked front legs folded as if in prayer, then snatch insects in a fraction of a second. There are about 2,400 species worldwide. A praying mantis can turn its head about 180 degrees, and females sometimes eat males during or after mating.

Proboscis monkey

The proboscis monkey lives only on the island of Borneo, in mangroves, swamps and riverside forests. Adult males have a huge, drooping nose that may help make their calls louder and attract females. It is an excellent swimmer with partly webbed feet, and it is listed as Endangered.

Pronghorn

The pronghorn of the western North American plains is the fastest land mammal in the Americas, reaching about 88 km/h (55 mph), and it can keep up a high speed for much longer than a cheetah. Although often called an antelope, it is the only surviving member of its own family, the Antilocapridae.

Ptarmigan

Ptarmigans are plump grouse of the Arctic tundra and high mountains. The rock and willow ptarmigans turn white in winter and mottled brown in summer, matching the landscape, and their feathered feet work like snowshoes. The willow ptarmigan is the state bird of Alaska.

Pufferfish

Pufferfish can inflate themselves into a spiny ball by rapidly gulping water. Many species contain tetrodotoxin, a powerful nerve poison. In 2014, scientists described a small Japanese species, the white-spotted pufferfish, whose males sculpt intricate circular patterns about 2 m (6.6 ft) wide in the sand to attract females.

Puffin

Puffins are small seabirds of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, with three species: the Atlantic, horned and tufted puffins. Their bills become brightly colored in the breeding season. They nest in burrows on cliff-top islands and can carry many small fish crosswise in their bills at once. The Atlantic puffin is listed as Vulnerable.

Puma

The puma, also called the cougar or mountain lion, has the largest range of any wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, from Canada’s Yukon to the southern Andes. It holds a Guinness world record for the animal with the most names, with over 40 in English alone. Pumas cannot roar, but they can purr, hiss and scream.

Pygmy hippopotamus

The pygmy hippopotamus is a shy, mostly nocturnal hippo from the forests and swamps of West Africa, mainly Liberia. Adults weigh 180–275 kg (400–600 lb), about a tenth of a common hippo. It is Endangered, with fewer than 2,500 left in the wild, though a zoo-born calf named Moo Deng became an internet star in Thailand in 2024.

Python

Pythons are large, nonvenomous constricting snakes of Africa, Asia and Australia, with about 40 species. The reticulated python of Southeast Asia is the longest snake in the world, and exceptional individuals exceed 6 m (20 ft). Burmese pythons released or escaped from captivity have become an invasive species in Florida’s Everglades.