Animals starting with 'B'

From Baboon to Box jellyfish, here are 22 animals beginning with the letter B

Published: April 17, 2024 at 11:46 am

Discover 22 animals that start with the letter 'B'. Can you think of more? Let us know what we have missed...

Animals starting with 'B'

Baboon


The baboon is one of the world's largest monkeys and live throughout Africa and Arabia.

In total there are five species of baboon: olive, yellow, chacma, Guinea, and sacred. 

Banded mongoose

Banded mongoose
(Mungos mungo).

Banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) are poor cousins of the meerkat; close taxonomic relatives with a fraction of the fame but the same goofy charisma (in spades).

Barn owl

The barn owl is a very distinctive species of owl, with an iconic ‘facial disc’, white face and underside, and light brown and grey feathers on the back of its head and its back.

 Beaked sea snake

Beaked sea snake (Enhydrina schistosa) on the sand.

Thought to be the deadliest of the 64 species of snakes that spend the majority of their lives in the ocean, the beaked sea snake delivers its venom via a small pair of fangs at the front of its mouth.

The venom contains a powerful toxin that causes paralysis, including of the diaphragm, potentially leading to respiratory failure.

We named it one of the world's deadliest sea creatures

Beaver

There are two species of beaver, the North American beaver and Eurasian beaver. Eurasian beavesr once lived all over Europe and Asia. Now they only live in small numbers in southern Scandinavia, Germany, France, Poland, central Russia and Britain.

The North American beaver is Canada's national animal.

Bewick swan

Three Bewick's swans standing on grass
Bewick's swans at a wetland in Norfolk, England, UK. © Mike Powles/Getty

Bewick's swans are the smallest of the swan species found in the UK. They are migratory winter visitors to the UK, travelling 2,500 miles here from Siberia.

Black-and-white ruffed lemur

Lemurs are our most distant primate cousins, and only found on the island of Madagascar where they’ve been evolving in isolation for some 50-60 million years. Endangered black-and-white ruffed lemurs are unusual for primates since they give birth to litters of up to three babies.

Black bear

A black bear foraging on vegetation. © Colleen Gara

The black bear is the smallest, yet most common, of the three bear species found in America (after the polar bear and grizzly bear). It's still pretty big though!

Black bear weight varies enormously depending on age, sex and time of year - black bears can be 30% heavier in autumn than they are in spring.

Blackbird

Blackbird Turdus merula, female, on garden fork handle

A familiar bird to many, the blackbird can be found in a variety of habitats, including gardens.

Adult male blackbirds have black plumage and, during the breeding season, and orange yellow eye-ring and bill. Females are brown, often with a paler throat patch.

Black mamba

Black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis)
© Getty Images

This snake, found in sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the deadliest snakes in the world and probably most feared of all.

Unlike the relatively docile inland taipan, the black mamba is known to be particularly aggressive

Blue-ringed octopus

A blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata) crawls across the reef while hunting for crustaceans at a dive site named Critter Hunt in Indonesia's Lembeh Strait.

Don’t be deceived by its beautiful markings or the fact that it’s adorably pocket-sized; this family of Pacific and Indian Ocean octopuses boasts one of the most potent venoms in the sea.

Their salivary glands produce tetrodotoxin, another poison that rapidly causes paralysiswith potentially fatal consequences. 

Blue tit

Blue tit perched on blackthorn branch with blossom.
© Drew Buckley

With their smart blue caps, yellow breasts and white cheeks, blue tits are one of our most colourful garden visitors.

They are also wonderfully acrobatic – clinging, swinging and pecking for food at remarkable angles on bird feeders

Blue whale

The blue whale is the largest animal in the world, measuring up to 33 metres long.

Blue whales are actually blue-grey, but they appear brilliantly turquoise in the water as they reflect the blue sky. 

Blobfish

One of the world's weirdest animals the blobfish dwells 1,200m deep on the ocean floor.

It is this deep-water living that causes it to look like an “85-year-old Mr Blobby” (according to the fish manager at the Australian Museum which holds the most well-known and photographed specimen).

Boa constrictor

A large powerful snake that is famous for squeezing the living breath out of their victims before swallowing them whole.

They grow to about 4 metres long and weighs between 10-15kg.

Bobbit worm

Bobbit worm
The Bobbit Worm (Eunice aphroditois) is a fearsome marine predator that burrows into the sand and waits for unsuspecting prey to come within striking distance. With its long, serpentine body and sharp, tooth-lined jaws, it's a force to be reckoned with in the underwater world.

Bobbit worms inhabit warm seas worldwide, and hide its bulk by burying itself deep in the sediment on the ocean floor. With only its tentacles exposed, the worm resembles an innocuous frond of seaweed.

Bonobo

Bonobo mature male 'Manono' aged 17 years and juvenile male 'Pole' aged 4 years in act of sexual stimulation (Pan paniscus). Lola Ya Bonobo Santuary, Democratic Republic of Congo. Oct 2010.

The bonobo is a species of great ape and part of the Hominidae family.

There are eight extant (living) species, consisting of the bonobo, the closely related chimpanzee, two species of gorilla, three species of orangutan, and humans.

bongo
Getty Images

The bongo is the third-largest antelope in the world, which is native to central and Western Africa. The species is split into two subspecies: the western or lowland bongo and the eastern or mountain bongo.

Borneo tarsier

Borneo Tarsier is one of the weirdest animals in the world
Image credit: Getty Images

This small strange-looking, big-eyed, nocturnal, carnivorous primate is reminiscent of a house elf in Harry Potter - or perhaps it's Gollum from The Lord of The Rings he reminds us of. It eats mainly insects and lives in primary and secondary forest, as well as along the coasts or on the edge of plantations.

We named it one of the world's weirdest animals

Bottlenose dolphin

Newborn Atlantic bottlenose dolphin and mother Curacao, Netherlands Antilles.
Newborn Atlantic bottlenose dolphin and mother Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. © Wild Horizon / Getty Images

Bottlenose dolphins are found in warm and temperate seas worldwide, except in the Arctic and Antarctic Circle regions.

Bottlenose dolphins are varying shades of grey all over, with a distinctive bottle-shaped rostrum (snout).

Brown bear

The brown bear lives across North America and Eurasia and is the the most widely distributed bear in the world.

Box jellyfish

Box jellyfish

Found in coastal marine waters around the world, the box jellyfish is one of the world’s deadliest animals in the ocean thanks to a venom containing toxins that strike at the heart, nervous system and even skin cells of anyone unlucky enough to touch one of its tentacles.

Looking for more fascinating facts?

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