A new animal every day

This was Thursday’s animal. Every day has its own page.

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Thursday 22 October 2026

A large oval brick-red animal with a rough, pebbly leathery back resting among dark seaweed and yellow kelp.
Photo: Tom Field · CC BY 4.0 · iNaturalist

Picked by voters

Gumboot chiton

It scrapes food off rocks with teeth made of magnetite, an iron mineral. They are harder than any other known mineral made by a living thing.

Lives in
Rocky reefRocky shores and shallow reefs of the North Pacific, from California to Alaska and Japan
More about the gumboot chitonScientific name, size and Red List status
Scientific name
Cryptochiton stelleri
Size
Up to 33 cm long
IUCN Red List
Not evaluated

The IUCN Red List has assessed 175,909 species. This one has not been assessed yet. What this means

Fact source: UC Riverside

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This week

Every animal so far
  1. Mon 19Basket star
  2. Tue 20Alpaca
  3. Wed 21Sociable weaver
  4. Thu 22Gumboot chitonViewing
  5. Fri 23Cape dwarf chameleonToday
  6. Sat 24Tomorrow’s animalin 1 h 0 min
  7. Sun 25

Why Animall

People can’t care about animals they have never heard of.

Scientists still discover thousands of new animal species every year, while many others are disappearing because of habitat loss and climate change. Some die out before anyone has described them.

10,000+

new animal species are described every year.

University of Arizona, 2025

86%

of species on Earth, and 91% in the ocean, have not been described yet.

Mora et al., 2011

73%

average drop in monitored wildlife populations between 1970 and 2020.

WWF Living Planet Report, 2024