Nocturnal Animals: 20 Creatures That Come Alive at Night

What does nocturnal mean?

A nocturnal animal is active at night. Its opposite is diurnal, meaning active by day, like most songbirds and humans. Crepuscular animals are busiest at dawn and dusk, and cathemeral animals are active in irregular bursts around the clock. The lines are blurred: many species are “mostly nocturnal” and change their habits with the season, the weather or the presence of people.

Animals live at night for good reasons. Darkness helps small animals hide from predators. In deserts, the cool night lets them save water. And plenty of food, from moths to mice, is itself out after dark.

How are nocturnal animals adapted to the dark?

• Big eyes and wide pupils gather as much light as possible. Owls and tarsiers have enormous eyes for their size.
• Rod-rich retinas. Rod cells work in dim light but do not see color, so many night animals see a world of grays.
• Eyeshine. Foxes, cats and many other mammals have a mirror-like layer behind the retina, the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light back through the eye.
• Sharp hearing. Owls have a dish-shaped face that funnels sound, and some have ear openings set at different heights to pinpoint prey.
• Echolocation. Bats, and a few birds, find their way by listening to the echoes of their own calls.
• Smell and touch. Kiwis sniff out worms, hedgehogs follow their noses, and many mammals feel their way with sensitive whiskers.

1. Barn owl

Barn owls are the classic night hunters. Their heart-shaped facial disc collects sound like a satellite dish, and their ear openings are set asymmetrically, so they can locate a mouse rustling in grass by sound alone. Soft, fringed feathers make their flight almost silent. Learn more in our barn owl profile and in what do owls eat?

2. Tawny owl

The tawny owl is the common woodland owl of Europe and parts of western Asia, and its hooting is a familiar night sound. The famous “twit-twoo” is really two birds: a sharp “ke-wick” call, often from a female, answered by a male’s “hoo-hoo-oo”. It hunts mainly by ear, dropping silently from a perch onto mice and voles, and nests in tree holes.

3. Red fox

The red fox is mostly active at night and at dawn and dusk, especially where people are around. On quiet nights it hunts voles with a high, arching pounce, guided by its excellent hearing. City foxes in particular keep late hours to avoid traffic and people; see what do foxes eat? for what they find.

4. European hedgehog

Hedgehogs leave their daytime nests at dusk and spend the night snuffling through gardens, hedges and meadows for beetles, earthworms, caterpillars and slugs. An adult carries up to about 6,000 spines. Across northern Europe they hibernate through the winter. Because of steep declines in several countries, the IUCN listed the European hedgehog as Near Threatened in 2024.

5. Common pipistrelle

This tiny bat weighs only about 3.5–8.5 g (0.1–0.3 oz), yet from dusk onward it hunts midges and other small insects on the wing using echolocation. It sends out calls at around 45 kHz, too high for people to hear, and listens for the echoes. It is one of the most common bats in Europe, often roosting in buildings.

6. Aye-aye

The aye-aye of Madagascar is the world’s largest nocturnal primate and one of the strangest. It taps on branches with a long, thin middle finger, listens for hollow spaces where grubs are hiding, gnaws a hole with its ever-growing front teeth and hooks the grub out. It is classified as Endangered.

7. Tarsiers

These small primates from the islands of Southeast Asia have the largest eyes relative to body size of any mammal: each eyeball is about as big as the tarsier’s brain. Their eyes cannot move in their sockets, so tarsiers turn their heads up to 180 degrees in each direction. They are the only living primates that eat no plants at all, hunting insects, lizards and other small animals.

8. Slow lorises

Slow lorises creep silently through the forests of South and Southeast Asia at night. They are the only venomous primates: they lick a gland on the inside of the upper arm and mix the secretion with saliva to make a toxic bite, used mostly in fights with other lorises. They are threatened by habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade, and several species are endangered.

9. Night monkeys

Also called owl monkeys, these Central and South American primates are the only truly nocturnal monkeys. They have huge eyes and see only in shades of gray, which helps them spot movement in dim light. Pairs are monogamous, and the father does most of the carrying of the single baby.

10. Raccoon

Raccoons are mainly nocturnal and famous for their nimble front paws, which they use to feel for food in water and under stones. Native to North America, they now also live wild in parts of Europe and Japan after escapes and releases in the 20th century. Their diet is about 40% invertebrates, a third plants and the rest small vertebrates.

11. European badger

Badgers spend the day underground in setts, burrow systems with many chambers that families may use for decades. They emerge after dark to forage, and in Britain earthworms are often their most important food. Badgers are very clean, regularly dragging out old bedding and bringing in fresh grass.

12. Virginia opossum

The only marsupial found in the United States and Canada is a solitary night forager that eats almost anything. When badly frightened it may “play possum”, collapsing into a motionless state that can last for hours. Wild opossums live remarkably short lives, rarely more than about two years.

13. Aardvark

The aardvark, whose Afrikaans name means “earth pig”, digs into termite mounds and ant nests at night across much of Africa south of the Sahara. It laps up insects with a sticky tongue up to 30 cm (12 in) long, and as many as 50,000 insects have been recorded eaten in a single night. See more animals like it in our animals that start with A.

14. Fennec fox

The smallest fox, weighing just 0.7–1.6 kg (1.5–3.5 lb), lives in the Sahara and comes out at night to avoid the heat. Its enormous ears release body heat and pick up the sounds of insects and rodents moving under the sand. It gets most of its water from its food.

15. Kinkajou

Kinkajous live in the rainforests of Mexico, Central America and South America and are so strictly nocturnal that few people ever see one. They feed mostly on fruit, use a long tongue to reach nectar and honey, and grip branches with a prehensile tail.

16. Hippopotamus

Hippos spend the hot African day resting in rivers and lakes. At nightfall they leave the water and walk several kilometers to graze, each eating around 40 kg (88 lb) of grass before returning by dawn. The species is classified as Vulnerable.

17. Kiwi

New Zealand’s flightless kiwis are mostly nocturnal and have poor eyesight. Instead they probe the forest floor with long bills that have nostrils at the very tip, a feature found in no other bird, and smell worms and grubs underground. A kiwi egg can weigh up to about 20% of the female’s body weight.

18. Kākāpō

The kākāpō of New Zealand is the world’s only flightless parrot, its heaviest parrot and a nocturnal plant-eater that walks and climbs through the forest at night. It is Critically Endangered: only a few hundred birds survive, each one named and closely monitored, mostly on predator-free islands.

19. Oilbird

Oilbirds roost and nest in caves in northern South America and Trinidad and fly out at night to feed on oily fruits. In the darkness of their caves they navigate by echolocation, using clicking calls that, unlike most bat calls, people can hear. They are the only nocturnal flying birds that live on fruit.

20. European nightjar

On summer evenings, European nightjars hunt moths and beetles over heaths and forest clearings, catching them in flight with a wide gape. By day their bark-patterned plumage makes them almost invisible on the ground. Males announce their territory with a long, mechanical churring song, and all nightjars from Europe spend the winter in Africa south of the Sahara.