How many animals start with U?

Only a small number of animals have common names beginning with U. The best known are the uakari, umbrellabird, unicornfish, urial, Ural owl, uromastyx, urutu and Utah prairie dog, plus a few names such as unau that are local or older names for familiar animals.

What is the most famous animal that starts with U?

The uakari is probably the best-known U animal, thanks to the bright scarlet face of the bald uakari. It is a short-tailed monkey of flooded forests in the western Amazon and is listed as Vulnerable.

What bird starts with U?

Birds beginning with U include the umbrellabird, the Ural owl and the upland sandpiper. The male long-wattled umbrellabird has a feathered wattle on its chest that can reach about 35 cm (14 in) long.

What sea animals start with U?

Ocean animals beginning with U include the unicornfish, a reef surgeonfish of the Indo-Pacific, and the upside-down jellyfish of warm, shallow lagoons. Sea urchins are usually listed under S, but 'urchin' is an old English word for hedgehog.

Is the unicorn a real animal?

No. The unicorn is a creature of legend, not a real animal. Several real animals carry its name, though: the unicornfish has a horn-like bump on its forehead, and the narwhal is often called the unicorn of the sea because of its long tusk.

Animals That Start With U: Uakari, Umbrellabird and More

Uakari

Uakaris are short-tailed monkeys of the flooded forests of the northwestern Amazon in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. Four species are recognized. The bald uakari has a bare, brilliant scarlet face, and the color is a sign of good health: females prefer males with the reddest faces. Uakaris crack open hard, unripe fruit and seeds with strong teeth. The bald uakari is listed as Vulnerable.

Uganda kob

The Uganda kob is a reddish-brown antelope of the grassy floodplains of Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a subspecies of the kob, and it appears on Uganda’s coat of arms beside a grey crowned crane. Where kobs are numerous, some males crowd their small territories together in a cluster called a lek, and females visit to choose a mate. It is easy to see in Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth national parks.

Uinta ground squirrel

The Uinta ground squirrel lives in mountain meadows, sagebrush and farmland in the western United States, mainly in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. It spends most of the year asleep underground. Adults usually wake in March, fatten up on plants and seeds, and go back into hibernation between late July and mid-August, so they are active for only about four or five months a year.

Ulysses butterfly

The Ulysses butterfly is a large swallowtail of northeastern Queensland in Australia, New Guinea, eastern Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. The upper sides of its wings are a dazzling, iridescent electric blue, while the undersides are plain brown and black, so the butterfly almost disappears when it lands and closes its wings. In Queensland its wingspan is about 10.5 cm (4 in), and it is used as an emblem for tourism in the state.

Umbrellabird

Umbrellabirds are three species of large, crow-sized birds of the cotinga family that live in tropical forests of Central and South America. They are named for the umbrella-shaped crest that the males fan out over the bill. Males also have an inflatable wattle on the neck that helps amplify their deep, booming calls; in the long-wattled umbrellabird of Colombia and Ecuador it can hang about 35 cm (14 in). The bare-necked umbrellabird of Costa Rica and Panama is Endangered.

Unau

Unau is another name for Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth, the largest living sloth, found in the rainforests of northern South America. It grows to about 53–89 cm (21–35 in) long and weighs 4–11 kg (9–24 lb). Unaus spend most of their lives hanging upside down from branches, and in the rainy season algae can tint their fur green. Find out why sloths are so slow.

Unicornfish

Unicornfishes are surgeonfishes of the genus Naso that live on coral and rocky reefs of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Several species grow a horn-like bump on the forehead, which gives the group its name. The bluespine unicornfish can reach about 70 cm (28 in) long. Like other surgeonfishes, unicornfishes carry sharp, blade-like plates near the tail that they can use in defense.

Upland sandpiper

The upland sandpiper is a shorebird that almost never visits the shore. It nests on prairies, pastures and hayfields in Canada and the northern United States, and it often perches on fence posts and telephone poles with its wings raised. Each autumn it migrates to the grasslands of northeastern Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. Its older names are upland plover and Bartram’s sandpiper.

Upside-down jellyfish

Upside-down jellyfish of the genus Cassiopea rest bell-down on the sandy bottom of warm, shallow lagoons, mangroves and seagrass beds, from Florida and the Caribbean to Hawaii, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. They lie this way so that sunlight reaches tiny algae living in their tissues, which make food for the jellyfish. Researchers have found that they show a sleep-like state at night, even though they have no brain.

Ural owl

The Ural owl is a large, pale gray-brown owl of the northern forests, from Scandinavia and eastern Europe across Russia to Japan. It has a wingspan of 110–134 cm (43–53 in) and a long tail for an owl. Females defend their nests fiercely and will strike intruders, which earned it the Swedish name slaguggla, “attacking owl”. Ural owls have been reintroduced in parts of central Europe, including Germany and Austria. Read how long owls live.

Urial

The urial is a wild sheep of the mountains and dry hills of Central and South Asia, from Iran and Turkmenistan to Pakistan and the Ladakh region of India. Males carry large, curling horns that can reach up to 100 cm (39 in) long. It is a wild cousin of the domestic sheep and is listed as Vulnerable, mainly because of poaching and competition with livestock for grazing.

Uromastyx

Uromastyx, or spiny-tailed lizards, are stout lizards of the deserts and rocky hills of North Africa and the Middle East. Their name means “tail whip”: the thick tail is covered in rings of spikes, and a threatened lizard swings it at attackers or uses it to block the entrance of its burrow. Unusually for lizards, adults eat mostly plants. Their colors change with temperature, often darker in the cool morning and brighter in the heat.

Urutu

The urutu, also called the crossed pit viper, is a highly venomous snake of southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and northern Argentina. Its scientific name, Bothrops alternatus, refers to the staggered markings along its body, and a cross-shaped mark on its head gives it the Argentine name víbora de la cruz. It is an important cause of snakebite in its range, so it is best admired from a distance; anyone bitten needs emergency medical help immediately.

Utah prairie dog

The Utah prairie dog is the smallest prairie dog, usually 30–36 cm (12–14 in) long including its short tail, and it lives only in the grasslands of south-central Utah. Like other prairie dogs, it lives in colonies of burrows and sleeps through the winter. It is listed as Endangered because of habitat loss and outbreaks of plague, a disease spread by fleas that can wipe out whole colonies.

Why so few animals start with U

In English, many words beginning with U start with the prefixes “un-”, “under-” and “up-”, which rarely appear in animal names. As a result, most U animals were named after places or borrowed from other languages. The Ural owl, Uinta ground squirrel, Uganda kob and Utah prairie dog are all named for places, while “uakari” is thought to come from an Indigenous language of the Amazon and “urutu” is one of the snake’s Brazilian names.

Some U names also fall out of use. “Urchin” was once an everyday English word for a hedgehog, and sea urchins were named for their spiny resemblance to it. For more animals, see animals that start with T or animals that start with V.