Animals That Start With Q: Quokka, Quetzal, Quoll and More

Quagga

The quagga was a zebra of the South African grasslands with stripes only on its head, neck and front half, fading to plain brown behind. Long thought to be its own species, it is now known from DNA to have been a southern form of the plains zebra. Heavy hunting wiped it out, and the last known quagga died at Artis zoo in Amsterdam on 12 August 1883. In 1984 it became the first extinct animal to have its DNA analyzed.

Quahog

Quahog is the common name for two different clams of the North Atlantic. The hard clam, or northern quahog, lives along the eastern coast of North America from Prince Edward Island south to the Yucatán Peninsula, and Native peoples of New England made purple wampum beads from its shell. The unrelated ocean quahog is extremely long-lived: one nicknamed Ming, collected off Iceland in 2006, was 507 years old, the oldest individual animal whose age is known precisely.

Quail

Quails are small, plump ground birds. The common quail of Europe is unusual among gamebirds because it migrates, flying between European breeding grounds and wintering areas in Africa and India. The Japanese quail is farmed for its eggs, while the California quail, with its curling head plume, is the state bird of California. New World and Old World quails belong to different bird families.

Quaker parrot

The Quaker parrot, better known as the monk parakeet, is a bright green parrot from Argentina and neighboring countries. Unlike almost all other parrots, which nest in tree holes, it builds huge communal nests out of sticks. Escaped pet birds have founded wild colonies in cities such as New York, Chicago, Madrid and Barcelona, and in 2015 Madrid alone held about 10,800 of them.

Queen Alexandra’s birdwing

Queen Alexandra’s birdwing is the largest butterfly in the world. Females can have a wingspan of 25–28 cm (10–11 in), while the smaller males are a brilliant iridescent blue-green and black. It lives only in the rainforests of Oro Province in Papua New Guinea and is listed as Endangered. It was named in honor of Alexandra of Denmark, wife of King Edward VII.

Queen angelfish

The queen angelfish is a vivid blue-and-yellow reef fish of the western Atlantic, from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico through the Caribbean to Brazil. It gets its name from the dark, blue-ringed spot on its forehead, which looks like a crown. Adults reach about 45 cm (18 in), and the juveniles work as cleaner fish, picking parasites off larger fish.

Queen conch

The queen conch is a large sea snail of the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Florida and Bermuda, with a heavy spiral shell whose lip glows pink inside. It grazes on algae in seagrass meadows. Very rarely, about once in 10,000 conchs, it produces a smooth pink pearl. Heavy harvesting has reduced numbers in many places, so international trade is controlled, and it is listed as Near Threatened.

Queen snake

The queen snake is a slender, harmless water snake of eastern North America, found from western New York and southern Ontario to Wisconsin and south to Alabama and northern Florida. It lives along clean, rocky streams. It is an extreme specialist that eats almost nothing but crayfish, choosing ones that have just shed their shells and cannot yet pinch.

Queensland lungfish

The Queensland lungfish, also called the Australian lungfish, lives in a few slow rivers of southeastern Queensland. It has a single lung and can gulp air at the surface when the water is low in oxygen. Fossils almost identical to it are over 100 million years old. One named Granddad lived at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago from 1933 until 2017, reaching an estimated 109 years old. The species is listed as Endangered.

Quelea

The red-billed quelea is a small, sparrow-like weaver bird of the dry savannas of Africa south of the Sahara. It is thought to be the most numerous wild bird on Earth, with the population sometimes peaking at about 1.5 billion birds after the breeding season. Flocks of millions move together like clouds of smoke and can strip grain fields.

Quetzal

The resplendent quetzal lives in cloud forests from southern Mexico to western Panama. Breeding males have shimmering green feathers, a red belly and twin tail streamers that are typically around 75 cm (30 in) long, about twice the length of the body. The Maya prized its feathers, and it is the national bird of Guatemala, whose currency is named after it. It is listed as Near Threatened.

Quokka

The quokka is a cat-sized wallaby from southwestern Australia, best known from Rottnest Island near Perth. It weighs 2.5–5 kg (5.5–11 lb). In 1696 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh mistook quokkas for giant rats and named the island “rat’s nest”. Its upturned mouth makes it look as if it is smiling, which has made it a star of tourist selfies. It is listed as Vulnerable.

Quoll

Quolls are spotted marsupial predators, with four species in Australia and two in New Guinea, ranging from about 300 g (11 oz) to 7 kg (15 lb). They hunt mostly at night for insects, small mammals and birds. The spotted-tailed quoll is the largest. The northern quoll is Endangered, partly because many die after eating poisonous invasive cane toads, and the eastern quoll vanished from the Australian mainland in the 1960s but survives in Tasmania.

Why so few animals start with Q

In English, Q is almost always followed by U and starts very few native words, so most Q animal names were borrowed from other languages. “Quokka” comes from the Noongar language of Western Australia, “quoll” from the Guugu Yimithirr language of north Queensland, and “quetzal” from the Aztec language Nahuatl, where it referred to the bird’s long tail plumes. “Quahog” comes from Narragansett, a language of New England.

Many other Q names start with the word “queen”. These are descriptive common names, usually given for a creature’s size or beauty, as with the queen angelfish and queen conch. A queen bee or queen ant, by contrast, is not a separate species at all but the egg-laying female of a colony. For a bigger selection, see animals that start with P or animals that start with R.