Sensitive, intelligent elephants are the world’s largest land mammal (by weight) and a living link to long-extinct species like the woolly mammoth.

Combine a bulbous snout with a prominent jaw, a body like a beer keg set on four stubby legs, and you have a hippopotamus.

Members of the weasel family, otters are known for their elongated bodies, webbed feet and playful antics, particularly their love of sliding down rocks, banks or waterfalls.

Depending on pack ice for their habitat, polar bears are threatened by climate change—and by traffic in their fur and parts.

One of the largest living land mammals, rhinoceroses once shared the earth with saber-toothed cats and the earliest humanlike apes.

Zebras are striped, horse-like mammals that live across Africa.