This page includes all animals that start with the letter H that we plan to cover on Fact Animal. As we publish new content, each of these animals will be linked to their dedicated profile fact pages.
From Hagfish to Hyrax, read extraordinary facts about animals beginning with the letter H.
H
Haast’s Eagle
Habu Snake
Haddock
Hagfish
Hairy Frogfish
Hairy Woodpecker
Hairy-footed Flower Bee
Halibut
Hamburg Chicken
Hammerhead Shark
Hammerhead Worm
Hammer-headed Bat
Hammerkop
Hammond’s Flycatcher
Hamster
Hapuka
Harbor Porpoise
Harbor Seal
Hardhead Catfish
Hare
Hare Wallaby
Harlequin Coral Snake
Harlequin Rabbit
Harp Seal
Harpy Eagle
Harrier
Harris’s Hawk
Hartebeest
Harvest Mouse
Havapoo
Hawaiian Crow
Hawaiian Goose (Nene)
Hawaiian Monk Seal
Hawk
Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Hawk Moth Caterpillar
Hedgehog
Hellbender
Helmeted Hornbill
Hepatic Tanager (Red Tanager)
Hercules Beetle
Hercules Moth
Hermit Crab
Heron
Herring
Herring Gull
Highland Cattle
Highland Pony
Himalayan Vulture
Hippopotamus
Hoary Bat
Hoatzin
Hobo Spider
Hogfish
Hognose Snake
Holy Cross Frog
Honduran White Bat
Honeyguide
Honeypot Ant
Honey Badger
Honey Bee
Honey Buzzard
Hooded Crow
Hooded Oriole
Hooded Pitohui
Hooded Seal
Hook-Nosed Sea Snake
Hoopoe
Horn Shark
Hornbill
Horned Adder
Horned Grebe
Horned lizard
Horned Viper
Hornet
Horse
Horse Mackerel
Horseshoe Crab
Horse-fly
Houdan Chicken
House Finch
House Mouse
House Sparrow
House Wren
Housefly
Howler Monkey
Human
Humboldt Penguin
Humboldt Squid
Hummingbird
Hummingbird Hawk-moth
Humpback Whale
Huntaway
Huntsman Spider
Husky
Hyacinth Macaw
Hyena
Hyrax
Please see our Animal A-Z list for animals that start with different letters.
Animal Names That Start With H
Read on for an overview of each of the animals listed above that begin with the letter H.
Haast’s Eagle
The Haast’s eagle was a legendary, yet very real raptor from New Zealand. It would have weighed up to 15 kg and been the largest eagle ever known to have existed. It went extinct in the 1200s when human settlers discovered the island and hunted its prey to extinction.
Fun Fact: This would have been the largest true raptor to have ever lived, even bigger than today’s vultures. It mostly hunted large, flightless birds.
Habu Snake
The Habu is a dangerous pit viper from Japan. It goes to about a meter and a half is quite slender for a viper and has a highly venomous bite. It’s mostly olive green with strong yellow or green blotches.
Fun Fact: the snake is responsible for a significant number of snakebites on its native islands. It is thought that two in 1000 people are bitten each year though deaths are rare.
Haddock
The haddock is a species of saltwater codfish from the North Atlantic. It grows to around 80 cm long and can in some instances way up to 11 kg. It’s an elongated silvery fish with delicate and large fins.
Fun Fact: The conservation status of haddock appears to be controversial with some organisations considering them a good food alternative and others considering them threatened.
Hagfish
Hagfish are ancient and primitive jawless fish that show up in the fossil record as far back as 300 million years. They are eel-like but are in fact a separate order of fish. They agree and elongate and release copious amounts of mucus when disturbed.
Fun Fact: Hagfish are the only known animals to have a skull but no vertebral column. They have some rudimentary vertebrae, but no spinal column to speak of.
Hairy Frogfish
The hairy frogfish is a species of frogfish from the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Atlantic oceans. It grows to about 22 cm long, is orange-brown with darker stripes, and is covered in long extensions of skin that make it look fluffy.
Fun Fact: This fish has such a large mouth that it can eat prey as large as itself.
Hairy Woodpecker
The hairy woodpecker is a 25 cm-long woodpecker species from North America. It’s mostly black on the back and head, wait on the front and has a small red mark seen in the male on the back of its head.
Fun Fact: This bird is almost identical to the Downey woodpecker in appearance yet is not very closely related and has just evolved to look very similar.
Hairy-footed Flower Bee
The hairy-footed flower bee is a wild solitary bee from Parks and Meadows in the UK. It resembles a small bumblebee, with males being a gingery brown and females looking much darker.
Fun Fact: This is one of the first B species to emerge in the spring and can be distinguished from a bumblebee by how much faster and more agile its flight is.
Halibut
Halibut or any of three species of large right-eye flounders from the flatfish order. They are found in the North Pacific North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. They start off life as relatively normal-looking fish and over time one of their eyes migrates to the other side of their head and they become flat. Brown on top and white underneath.
Fun Fact: The Atlantic halibut is the world’s largest flatfish and can grow up to 300 kg.
Hamburg Chicken
The hamburger chicken is a small to medium colourful domestic chicken breed originating in the Netherlands. Large males way up to 2.5 kg and females weigh 1.8 kg. There are multiple colour varieties.
Fun Fact: Somewhat confusingly, the German name for this chicken is hamburger.
Hammer-headed Bat
The hammerhead bat is a bizarre and large fruit basket from Central and Western Africa. Large examples of a wingspan of up to 1 m across. Females are like normal fruit bats, but the males have strange facial adaptations that help them with their mating calls.
Fun Fact: The differences between the males and females of the species make them the most sexually dimorphic species in the world.
Hammerhead shark
The Hammerheads are a strange-looking group of sharks found in warm waters all over the world. They range in size from just under 1 m to six metres long. They’re usually light to dark grey and look like you’re pretty standard sharks except for an enormous hammer-shaped cephalofoil on their heads.
Fun Fact: not only does this facial appendage improve the degree of vision for the shock, but it’s also covered with electroreceptors that can be used to find prey under the sand.
Hammerhead Worm
Hammerhead worms are a group of very strange-looking predatory flatworms. They are native to Asia but have invaded North America and Europe.
Fun Fact: these tiny but somewhat frightening predators hunt down native earthworms wrestle them into submission and then secrete digestive enzymes and suck up their juices.
Hammerkop
The hammerkop is a drab duck-looking wading bird from Africa, named for the crest that jumps out from the back of its head giving it a hammer-like appearance. They go to about 50 cm long and weigh half a kilo.
Fun Fact: These birds make unusual and messy nests in the tree canopy. These scruffy-looking constructions can be more than a meter and a half across and support the weight of an adult human.
Hammond’s flycatcher
Hammond’s flycatcher is a small olive green flycatcher from western North America and Central America. It prefers old-growth coniferous forests and looks almost identical to the dusky flycatcher, With a small short beak, grey wings and a white belly.
Fun Fact: Despite being tiny birds they could be fiercely territorial and males will engage in combat mid-air often becoming entangled and crashing to the ground together.
Hamster
Hamsters are a subfamily of rodents, likely related to voles and lemmings. There are 19 species ranging in size from the tiny Roborovski hamster that’s 5cm long, to the chunky Eurasian hamster that is over 30 cm long.
Fun Fact: Hamsters are well known and loved for being able to stuff their fat little faces with nuts and seeds they do this because they have special cheek pouches for storing food.
Hāpuku
The hapuku is a large, grouper-looking wreckfish from New Zealand. It grows up to 1.8 m long and can weigh up to 100 kg. It’s typically grey with a silver belly and has 10 distinctive spines sticking out from its back.
Fun Fact: These are some very long-lived fish that can live for longer than 60 years in the wild.
Harbour Porpoise
The harbour porpoise is one of the number of species of small cetaceans named for the habit of spending time around coastal and estuarine environments including harbours. They are small, even for purposes, less than 2 m long and weighing around 75 kg.
Fun Fact: these purposes are very comfortable in freshwater as well as marine environments and can be found hundreds of miles up into river systems.
Harbour Seal
The harbour seal, also known as the common seal, is the world’s most widespread pinniped. It’s found all over temperate and Arctic coastlines in the northern hemisphere. Harbour seals range from grey to black usually with a unique pattern of spots on their body. They weigh up to 180 kg and I just under 2 m long.
Fun Fact: there are five proposed subspecies of harbour seal with a total population of up to 500,000 worldwide.
Hardhead Catfish
The Hardhead catfish is a marine catfish from the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. It’s named for the hard bony plate, that points backwards from its head down its back. It’s quite long and slender for a catfish and grows to about 70 cm long, weighing up to around 5 kg.
Fun Fact: It’s possible that the species of fish uses some form of echolocation to navigate in its environment but the final details of this are yet to be fully understood
Hare
A hare is a large, fast and agile lagomorph, sometimes known as a Jackrabbit. They are related to rabbits, but usually a lot bigger, more solitary and not sedentary. They have longer ears, longer legs, and a more boxy head shape.
Fun Fact: Hares are exceptionally fast animals they can run up to 65 km an hour.
Hare Wallaby
Hare wallabies are a genius of small, rabbit-like marsupials from Australia. There are two extant mainland species, the spectacled hare-wallaby, from the North, and the Rufous hare-wallaby from the west. The banded hare wallaby is a small population from the Islands to the West.
Fun Fact: Since there are no native rodents to the continent island of Australia, marsupials have filled their niches and evolved to look remarkably similar.
Harlequin Coral Snake
The harlequin coral snake is a long and colourful snake with red and black rings, separated by yellow bands. They are primarily found in Florida and are highly venomous, making them dangerous to people and pets. However, they are very hesitant to bite.
Fun Fact: These snakes are often confused with the harmless Scarlet king snakes though are duller in colouration
Harlequin Rabbit
The harlequin rabbit is a colourful domestic breed of rabbit that originated from France. It’s typically black with patches of another colour such as orange or white. Harlequin rabbits go out about 3 kg and I said to be docile, friendly y and intelligent (for a rabbit).
Fun Fact: There is a gripping debate in the rabbit breeding world around whether this is technically a breed or just a colour morph of an already-established breed.
Harp Seal
The seal is a species of 2 m long true seal from the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Grow up to about 140 kg in weight and has silver-grey fur covering its body. On its back is a harp or wishbone-shaped pattern that led to their common name.
Fun Fact: Baby harp seals are born fluffy and white, camouflaged against the frozen sea ice on which they are reared but before long, they spend the vast majority of their time at sea.
Harpy Eagle
Harpy eagles are large raptorial birds from the New World. The typically slight grey on the back with a white front. They have large, powerfully hooked beaks up to 10 kg. These are some of the largest eagles in the world, standing at around a meter tall with a wingspan of 2.2 m.
Fun Fact: These Eagles are named after the Greek mythological Harpies, and are known to give out a melancholic scream or wail when around the nest.
Harrier
Harriers are around 19 species of small, diurnal hawks. They’re distinguished from their kin by their long tails, long narrow wings, and the way that they fly low and slowly over grassland when hunting.
Fun Fact: The gliding profile of this bird makes it instantly recognisable. Swooping over fields looking for prey, Harriers form a distinctive V shape with their wings.
Harris’s Hawk
Harris’s hawk is a relatively large bird of prey from the Americas and Western Europe. It’s typically dark brown with rusty reddish wings, dark eyes and a yellow beak and feet. The largest females way up to 1.6 kg and are significantly larger than the males.
Fun Fact: These birds are often seen three in a nest, with two males and one female sharing the space. It’s uncertain whether both males contribute to breeding.
Hartebeest
The hartebeest is a medium to large-sized African antelope standing just over a metre tall and 2.5 m long. It has a long cow-like head with ring horns that sweep up and back and is usually golden to light brown all over.
Fun Fact: These are tough antelopes, able to tolerate altitudes of up to 4000 m, arid and Savannah regions, and various habitats in between.
Harvest Mouse
Harvest mice are small members of the mouse and rat family living in Europe and Asia. Despite the name, they are closer related to rats than mice. They grow to about 8 cm long and have large eyes and rounded ears. They’re typically golden to wheat brown.
Fun Fact: These tiny rodents have prehensile tails and are able to grip branches with them while they feed using their opposable fingers and thumbs.
Havapoo
The Havapoo is a small domestic dog breed with the best name in the world. It is a cross between a poodle and a Havanese. Havapoos are small to medium dogs, with hypoallergenic coats and are therefore popular among people with allergies and small apartments.
Fun Fact: Being half poodle, these are remarkably intelligent animals and need a lot of stimulation despite being tiny.
Hawaiian Crow
The Hawaiian crow is a species of Corvid originally from Hawaii but is now extinct in the wild. The species was decimated by the introduction of rats and the small Asian mongoose that was introduced as pest control. This would’ve been one of the largest native birds to Hawaii and its disappearance has caused all kinds of problems to the ecosystem.
Fun Fact: Perhaps unsurprisingly, these crows are highly intelligent and captive. Individuals have been seen using sticks as tools to extract food from holes in wood.
Hawaiian Goose
The Hawaiian goose is an endemic goose species in Hawaii and also the official state bird of the state of Hawaii. It is very closely related to and likely evolved from the Canada goose, which must’ve gotten stuck on the island about 500,000 years ago.
Fun Fact: The American rapper Silentó refers to this goose by its other name, the nene. In his song “Watch We”, he repeatedly begs for attention from the bird.
Hawaiian Monk Seal
Hawaiian Monk seals are some of the rarest seal species in the world. They are grey around 2 m long, and weigh up to about 300 kg in particularly large examples. While found throughout the Hawaiian archipelago, it is thought that there are only 1600 of these seals left.
Fun Fact: These seals spend so much time at sea that they can end up covered in algae and need to go through what is known as a catastrophic moult around once a year during which time they shed their fur and the top layer of the skin.
Hawk
Hooks are highly intelligent birds and members of the raptor family. They have been found all over the world except for Antarctica. They are adept hunters, descending quickly from secluded perches in the trees, and using exceptional daytime vision to spot prey.
Fun Fact: The common soundbite used in Hollywood movies to depict a bald eagle screaming is actually the sound of a red-tailed hawk. Hawks sound much better than bald eagles.
Hawk Moth
Hawk moths are a family of moths with nearly 1500 species recorded. They are known to be large, and heavy, and the caterpillars are often colourful, thick, and have horns and/or ice spots.
Fun Fact: Some species of hawk moth, like the hummingbird hawk moths, can hover in place, pollinating flowers with exceptionally long tongues.
Hawksbill Turtle
The hawksbill turtle is a critically endangered marine turtle that grows to about 1 m long, up to 80 kg on average, and is found all over the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Ocean reefs. They primarily eat sea sponges, which make up the vast majority of their diet.
Fun Fact: Despite being found all over the world, very little is known about this elusive reptile. Its lifespan remains a mystery, and its life history is not very well understood.
Hedgehog
Hedgehogs are small insectivorous mammals with cute pointy noses, and backs covered in spines. There are 17 species found all over America, Europe, and Asia. They’re mostly nocturnal, not very right, but irresistibly cute.
Fun Fact: The taxonomy of hedgehogs is a matter of ongoing debate. It appears they are most closely related to shrews, but remain a unique lineage of animals with little comparison.
Hellbender
The Hellbender is an epic salamander species from the Americas. It is enormous, growing up to 75 cm long, and wrinkled, grey/brown skin, just found in clean, Clearwater all over North America. It mostly eats crayfish, but will also take insect worms tadpoles and molluscs as well as smaller amphibians.
Fun Fact: This animal is an indicator species; its presence suggests that the water quality is good. As one of the more sensitive animals in the aquatic ecosystem, its disappearance is an early warning sign of pollution.
Helmeted Hornbill
The helmeted hornbill is a positively prehistoric – hornbill from Southeast Asia. These large birds grow to more than a meter long and can weigh up to 3 kg. Like all hornbills, they have enormous faces with a casque which, in the species, makes up more than 10% of the bird’s body weight.
Fun Fact: This bird is a strangler fig specialist. It feeds on the fruit of the fig, spreading the seeds around, and contributing to the slow, constrictive death of host plants.
Henley Croco-duck
The Henley Crocoduck is a mysterious hybrid between a crocodile and a duck that entirely destroys the concept of Darwinian evolution. This absent animal proves once and for all that evolution doesn’t exist and that we are all the remarkable product of an impatient and insecure deity.
Fun Fact: The crocoduck has been used as a perfect example of how the American education system sometimes results in a dangerous combination of confidence and ignorance.
Hepatic Tanager (Red Tanager)
The Hepatic Tanager is a pretty little Songbird from the southern United States down into Central and Southern America. Inhabits pine and pine-oak forests, preferably at higher altitudes and is often red in males and yellow in females.
Fun Fact: despite the name, this bird has been reclassified and has been expelled from the Tanager family, now residing in the cardinal family.
Hercules Beetle
The Hercules beetle is a species of rhinoceros beetle from southern Mexico, Central America, and South America. It is one of the largest flying insects in the world and is named after its incredible strength. As a rhinoceros beetle, it has a long, protruding horn and can grow up to 17 cm long.
Fun Fact: this enormous beetle has a correspondingly enormous larva. The grubs of the species can grow to the size of your fist and way more than 100 g.
Hercules Moth
The Hercules moth is a giant Saturnid moth species with a wingspan of almost 30 cm across. It is the largest moth in Australia, where it is found, and is usually golden brown with white and transparent spots on the wings.
Fun Fact: This huge insect has a surface area of 300 cm², making it the largest surface area of any insect known.
Hermit crab
Hermit crabs are a subcategory of decapod crustaceans that have elected to save resources by inhibiting the discarded shells of other animals, rather than building their own. There are aquatic and terrestrial hermit crabs, as well as marine and freshwater varieties. Most have long, coiled abdomens which fit neatly into the shells of many molluscs.
Fun Fact: hermit crabs exhibit an astonishing diversity ranging from a few millimetres to 25 cm across and being able to live up to 70 years.
Heron
Herons lodge coastal and freshwater birds with long legs and long necks. The largest stands over 1 ½ m tall and they are recognisable by the S-shaped kink in their necks. They have long beaks, which are used almost like a spear when hunting in marshes and water.
Fun Fact: While most herons hunt during the day, night herons have evolved to function in the dark. They have dark, blood-red eyes and eat fish, frogs, and mammals.
Herring
Herring are small forage fish related to sprats. They are a family of fish, typically found in temperate and cooler waters, especially in the northern hemisphere. They eat smaller marine organisms, and our food for a wide range of large animals.
Fun Fact: Herring exhibit a fascinating feeding strategy, in which individuals swim the precise distance from one another that their prey can jump. This means that an organism escaping the mouth of one hungry herring will simply leap into the mouth of another.
Herring Gull
Herring gulls are a genus of very large gulls found all over the world. They’re mostly great and white, often with a red mark on their beak, and well known for stealing chips from old people.
Fun Fact: The red mark on the beak of a herring gull is thought to aid in the feeding of their young. Do juveniles will pack at the red dot to encourage the parent to vomit some tasty raw fish into their mouth.
Highland Cattle
The highland cow is a large domestic bovid from the western parts of Scotland. Highland cows have long, woolly coats and wide horns, and are usually reddish-brown. They grow to around 800kg in weight and stand over a metre tall.
Fun Fact: This is a hardy breed with exceptional cold tolerance, and has spread to countries all over the world as a result.
Highland Pony
The Highland pony originated from Scotland and is one of the largest pony breeds in Britain. Originally bred as a workhorse, they are strong and tough and relatively cheap to look after. They grow around 1.5 m tall at the most and have stocky but powerful legs.
Fun Fact: Despite being bred to pull things, these ponies are often enjoyed as all-rounders, comfortable being ridden, jumping, and for show as well as work.
Himalayan Vulture
The Himalayan vulture is one of the largest raptors in the world. It is native to Tibet and the Himalayas and is a shaggy-looking bird with dark brown and pale buff feathers. This bird grows to over 12 kg in weight and can have a wingspan of over 3 m.
Fun Fact: these are high-altitude specialists comfortable altitudes from 1200 m to almost 6000 m. Unfortunately, they are in dangerous decline as a result of toxicity from diclofenac.
Hippopotamus
Hippos are enormous semi-aquatic mammals, once found all over Europe now reduced to just African populations. They are powerful, aggressive, and well-armoured and are found in muddy shallow waters all over the continent.
Fun Fact: hippos represent an almost transitional species between land mammals and those that return to the ocean. Like Wales and dolphins, they appear to have some kind of subaquatic language that they use to communicate with one another from beneath the surface.
Hoary Bat
The hoary bat is a 13 cm-long bat species from the Americas. It has a dense, dark brown fur tipped with white, which gives it a sort of shaggy look. It mostly eats moths and migrates long distances from North America down into Central America for the winter.
Fun Fact: It’s thought that this bat makes use of delayed implantation to mate in August, then give birth in June, almost a year later.
Hoatzin
The Hoatzin is an incredible-looking bird from South America, growing up to 65 cm long with a long neck and impressive ginger crest. It has a long brown tail bronze wings and a yellow-brown belly with black and white feathers down its neck.
Fun Fact: this bird is born above water, and has claws on its wings that allow it to clamber around in the canopy without falling into the river below until it’s ready to fly.
Hobo Spider
Spiders grow to just over 1 cm long and are typically brown in colour. They have V-shaped patterns down their abdomen that point towards the head. They can be found in the central western part of North America.
Fun Fact: though not particularly dangerous, hobo spiders can inflict a painful and somewhat necrotic bite.
Hogfish
Hog Fish or a colourful species of wrasse, native to the western Atlantic and commonly found all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. They have a long, pig-like snout, which is used to hunt and eat crustaceans buried in the sediment. They’re born pale grey and grow to be dark brown or reddish as they age.
Fun Fact: Hogfish are born female, and mature to become male around three years of age.
Hognose Snake
Hognose snakes are several species of unrelated colubrid snakes so-named for their upturned noses. There are around 15 species across three genera, and they are highly variable in colour. They will commonly play dead and roll onto their backs with their tongues hanging out.
Fun Fact: the special nose seen in these snakes, is thought to be an adaptation that aids in digging. While under the soil, they hunt down and feed on lizard eggs.
Holy Cross Frog
The Holy Cross frog, or crucifix toad, is a colourful burrowing frog from Australia. It’s small, distinctively round, with a blunt face and tiny legs. It grows to just over 6 cm long and ranges in colour from brown to green.
Fun Fact: when threatened, this frog releases a sticky substance onto its back. Nobody is quite sure why.
Honduran White Bat
The Honduran white bat is an unusual, small, very white bat from Central America. It grows to about 5 cm long at most, is covered in white fluffy hair, and has bright yellow ears and a long yellow nose.
Fun Fact: another name for this bat is the tent-making bat because it chews out the ribs of leaves and uses them to build a shelter under the leaf.
Honey Badger
The honey badger is an infamous mustelid from Asia and Africa. It is a relatively small yet immensely powerful carnivore, most closely related to martens. Honey badgers are around 28 cm tall, and weigh up to 16 kg. They are typically silvery white on top with a black face, legs, and belly.
Fun Fact: The honey badger is an expert snake killer, and has even evolved a natural resistance to certain venoms.
Honey Bee
The honey bee is a eusocial member of the bee genus Apis. It is native to Africa and Eurasia but has been spread all over the world by human bee farming. Honey bees make large colonies with multiple castes, collecting and storing nectar and pollen from flowers.
Fun Fact: Killer bees are a form of honeybee that stems from a hybrid between the domesticated Western honeybee and the far more aggressive East African Lowland bee.
Honey Buzzard
The honey buzzard is a medium-sized raptor found in Africa and Eurasia. It has a small head, a long tail and is mostly grey-brown.
Fun Fact: This is a very long-distance migrant, using the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate from breeding locations in northern Europe all the way down to the southern parts of Africa.
Honeyguide
Honeyguides are a family of birds in the woodpecker order, found predominantly in Africa, with some in Asia. Most are dull-looking, but some have bright yellow colour on their throats.
Fun Fact: These birds are named after at least one species that will deliberately lead people to bee colonies, where they can feast on the leftovers after the humans have taken the honey.
Honeypot Ant
Honeypot ants are peculiar ants that walk around with huge stores of nectar in their abdomens. These so-called “living larders” carry this food back to the nest where other ants will then feed from them. There are many genera of ants that do this, mostly found in semi-arid environments.
Fun Fact: At least one species of honeypot ant is a common delicacy as an edible insect among indigenous Australians.
Hooded Crow
The hooded crow is a Eurasian corvid, so-named because of its grey shoulders and belly, contrasting against its black head and wings. It’s mostly found in Northern and Eastern Europe.
Fun Fact: It’s only recently that this crew was designated its own species name as it is almost identical to the carrion crow.
Hooded Oriole
The hooded oriole is a pretty little New-World oriole found from the Southern United States to Mexico. It’s yellow-bodied, with a black face, wings and tail.
Fun Fact: These are some of the largest birds that you’ll see visiting hummingbird feeders to get to the nectar.
Hooded Pitohui
The hooded pitohui is an Old-World oriole endemic to New Guinea. It’s a rusty-reddish colour with a black head and wings.
Fun Fact: This is a highly poisonous bird, using the same toxins that poison dart frogs use, and is the first bird to have been documented as poisonous.
Hooded Seal
The hooded seal is a medium-sized seal, growing up to about 2 ½ m long on average and weighing up to 300 kg. It is a silver-grey, covered in irregular, dark markings. It is found only in the central and western North Atlantic.
Fun Fact: these are relatively deep diving seals, able to descend to more than a kilometre down and spend as much as 52 minutes submerged.
Hook-Nosed Sea Snake
The hook-nosed sea snake is a notorious marine reptile known for its relatively high aggression and potent venom. The snake is quite chunky looking, with a flattened tail, and a large rostral scale that gives it its name.
Fun Fact: This single species is responsible for more than half of the bites from sea snakes and the majority of fatalities.
Hoopoe
Hoopoes are wonderful-looking birds found all over Africa and Eurasia. They are usually orange-brown, with banded wings, long beaks and a characteristic crest.
Fun Fact: These glamourous animals love to sunbathe and will spread out their wings and crests to make the most of the good weather.
Horn Shark
The Horn shark is a species of bullhead shark with a short, wide head and ridges over its eyes. Horn sharks grow to around 1 m long, and spend most of their time on the sea bed around the continental shelf of the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Fun Fact: This shark prefers to “walk” than swim, pushing itself along the sandy bottom with its pectoral fins.
Hornbill
Hornbills are large and ostentatious birds from Africa and Asia. Many species have enormous growths attached to their heads and large beaks.
Fun Fact: The hornbill tongue is too short to reach the front of its beak, which forces the bird to perform an elegant trick when eating, whereby it throws a piece of fruit into the air and catches it and its open mouth.
Horned Adder
The horned adder is a sandy-looking viper species from Southwest Africa. It grows to around 30 cm long and inhabits deserts and dry scrub.
Fun Fact: Despite being venomous, there are no records of any dangerous interactions between the species and humans.
Horned Grebe
The horned grebe is a very pretty species of Grebe with two colourful tufts of feathers framing its head. It grows to about 40 cm long, has a long neck, and during breeding season is orange-brown.
Fun Fact: The bright colours on this bird only show up during mating seasons, between which it’s a more typical black and white bird.
Horned lizard
Horned lizards are a genius of plump and spiky reptiles found in North America. They are typically black white and grey, irregularly patterned, and around 15 cm long.
Fun Fact: These lizards can shoot blood out of their eyes as a self-defence mechanism. This jet can reach over a metre.
Horned Viper
Horned vipers are a genus of small and spicy snakes found in North Africa and Arabia. They are named after the spine-like scales that appear behind each eye in the two largest species of the genus.
Fun Fact: These horns remain a bit of a mystery, and even within the two species that present with them, they’re not always there.
Hornet
Hornets are large, eusocial wasps from the Vespa genus. The other largest of all wasps, and build large communal nests out of paper made from chewed-up wood. Hornets are found in the northern hemisphere.
Fun Fact: While nursing their young, hornets also feed on the sugary secretions that are produced by the larvae.
Horse
Horses are large, powerful, beautiful yet kind of stupid animals, having been domesticated by humans for thousands of years. They are exceptionally fast, agile, and coming all colours and sizes from the 1 m tall dwarf breeds to the largest Shire horses, twice that size.
Fun Fact: Horses have the largest eyes of any land mammal and have evolved to spot and then excitedly flee from danger.
Horse Mackerel
Horse mackerel is a general term for a number of species of fish found in the open ocean. Most are species of jack mackerel, medium-sized pelagic fish found all over the world.
Fun Fact: The largest species grows to 2 metres long, and the majority of these fish are active hunters of reef fishes.
Horse-fly
Horse flies are large and fast-moving true flies, universally despised for their habit of giving painful bites and sometimes diseases to people and their animals. The largest species grow up to 2.5 cm long and can have a 6cm wingspan.
Fun Fact: Only female horseflies bite, in order to access blood proteins to nourish their eggs. Both adults sustain themselves on nectar.
Horseshoe crab
Horseshoe crabs are incredible members of the spider and scorpion lineage of arthropods, dating back 250 million years and looking very much like it. They have round and domed carapaces with a long, spine-like tail and blue blood.
Fun Fact: Horseshoe crab blood reacts to viruses by clotting, and is often harvested for use in the purity testing of vaccines.
Houdan Chicken
The Houdan is a domestic breed of chicken originating from Paris. It’s most commonly mottled with black and white plumage, crested, with a beard and a leaf-shaped comb.
Fun Fact: These chickens have more toes than your average hen. Unlike the standard four, Houdans have five.
House Finch
The house finch is a true finch from Mexico and the United States. It grows to about 15cm long and is mostly brown with a faded red front in males and a robust, yellow beak.
Fun Fact: These are incredibly successful birds, with an estimated forty million individuals across the US.
House Mouse
House mice are very special little rodents, named after their preference to share their homes with humans. They grow to around 10cm long and weigh around 40g. They have a long, almost hairless tail and a pointed snout.
Fun Fact: The house mouse is so comfortable living in human habitats, that there are now more populous inside houses than they are in the wild.
House Sparrow
The house sparrow is a small and common bird native to Europe but introduced to Africa, Asia and the Americas, too. It’s about 15cm long, plump, with a short, seed-eating beak and typically has a mix of grey and brown plumage.
Fun Fact: This species is particularly successful around human agriculture, something which has led to it becoming a pest in some of its introduced regions.
House wren
The house wren is a very small species of wren from the Americas. Adults grow to about 12 cm long and weigh only 10 g. They usually usually mix of dull greyish brown with light bellies.
Fun Fact: This species is the most widely distributed bird species native to the Americas.
Housefly
The housefly is a large and fairly ugly dipteran, usually around 6cm, dark grey or black, partially hairy, and with large, red eyes and sometimes orange flanks.
Fun Fact: Despite being altogether unappealing animals, house flies are highly specialised creatures with incredible adaptations such as legs that can taste and sucker feet with disconnector levers.
Howler Monkey
How the monkeys are large and loud New World monkeys from South and Central America. They grow up about 90 cm long with a tail of equal length or much longer, and are usually uniform in colour, be it black, red or brown.
Fun Fact: Howlers are one of the loudest animals on earth with a call that can be heard 3 miles away.
Human
Humans are large, bipedal monkeys from the Great Ape family. They are native to Africa but have become invasive throughout every continent except Antarctica. They are highly adaptable omnivores but prefer to feed mostly on sugar and fat.
Fun Fact: The funniest species of human that ever lived was called Homo erectus.
Humboldt Penguin
The Humboldt penguin is a medium-sized coastal penguin from South America. It is usually a dirty white with black wings and face, and is known to nest in tunnels dug out of its own generational poo pile.
Fun Fact: Despite living relatively far north for a penguin, they share a similar diet to their Antarctic cousins, by way of the Humboldt current, which brings nutrients up from the South.
Humboldt Squid
The Humboldt squid is one of the most frightening animals of the ocean. This two-meter-long predatory cephalopod lives at Middle depth in the Pacific Ocean and is known to hunt in packs of up to 1200 individuals.
Fun Fact: Lie many cephalopods, the squid communicate using flashing lights and colour changes. Combinations of flickering and flashing pass unknown information between individuals.
Hummingbird
Hummingbirds are small nectar-feeding birds from the Americas. They represent some of the smallest species of bird in the world, and span from Alaska to the Southern tip of South America. They are named for their ability to hover, flapping so fast that they make a buzzing sound.
Fun Fact: Flowers that evolved to be pollinated by hummingbirds reflect colours that insects can’t see.
Hummingbird Hawk-moth
The hummingbird hawk-moth is found throughout the temperate regions of Eurasia and is named for the similarity in its feeding strategy to that of a hummingbird. These moths are large, mostly grey, and have orange hind wings.
Fun Fact: This moth’s 3 cm-long proboscis is almost as long as its wingspan, which is around 4 cm.
Humpback Whale
The humpback is a large marine mammal and baleen whale, easily identified by its wing-like pectoral flippers and ridged back. Humpbacks can grow up to 17 m long and weigh 40 tonnes. They’re found all over the world and can migrate 16,000 km in a year.
Fun Fact: These whales are known for the high levels of activity at the surface, including breaching and tail slapping.
Huntaway
The huntaway is a large and agile shepherding dog from New Zealand. They can weigh up to 45kg and are usually black and tan. They have high stamina and intelligence and are well adapted to the conditions found in the highlands of New Zealand.
Fun Fact: While not very well-known outside of New Zealand. These are the most common dogs on the islands after the Labrador retriever.
Huntsman Spider
Huntsman spiders are gangly, large and highly active predatory arachnids known for their long legs and long-distance journeys and such of food. They have excellent vision and chase down prey, rather than sitting in waiting for it.
Fun Fact: These are not dangerous animals, however, they can grow to incredible sizes, some with a leg span of up to 30 cm across.
Husky
The husky is a beautiful and overly dramatic breed of domestic dog, originally designed for driving sledges in the Arctic regions. It has a thick, well-insulated coat, and boundless energy.
Fun Fact: The ancestors of the husky were likely hybridised with wolves which may have given them useful adaptations to the cold.
Hyacinth Macaw
The hyacinth macaw is a large parrot species from South America. With tail included, a crew to around a meter long and can weigh well over 1 kg. it is blue all over apart from a slightly grey neck and a bright yellow beak.
Fun Fact: These huge macaws rely on trees planted by the toco toucan, but are also predated upon by this species as eggs.
Hyena
Hyenas are exceptional and prehistoric filiform carnivores, once prevalent over much of the world, now confined to Africa and the Middle East. They are powerful and intelligent animals with sloped backs and short faces.
Fun Fact: Hyenas represent an ancient mammalian lineage, with some extinct species reaching 200kg and able to crush elephant bones to eat.
Hyrax
The hyrax is an odd little relative of the elephant that looks far more like a rodent. Hyraxes are found all over Africa and the Middle East, and are split generally into rock and tree hyraxes, depending on where they prefer to live.
Fun Fact: Tree hyraxes make the most frightening sound ever produced, which they only do after dark when you can’t spot them doing it.
What Other Animals Begin With ‘H’?
That completes our list of animals that begin with the letter H.
Hopefully you’ve learned a few new ones, but are there any that we’re missing in our list that you would like to see covered?
If so, get in touch. Please see our Animal A-Z list for animals that start with different letters.