Random Animal Generator
Press Draw and this picks animals at random out of a list of 299 names written for this tool: all of them, or only land animals, only marine animals, only birds or only invertebrates. The filter is the part most random animal pages leave out, so a round of a classroom game can be birds and nothing else, and the pool it draws from says how many are in it: 86 land, 57 marine, 100 birds and 56 invertebrates. Every pick comes from the browser's cryptographic random generator, mapped onto the pool by rejection so no name is favoured over another, and with repeats off a draw is a shuffle, so each animal comes out once until the pool is used up. You can type your own animals into the pool, up to 200 of them, and they are drawn alongside the built-in list whichever group is chosen and labelled Yours in the result. Nothing is uploaded, no account is asked for, and the only thing an entry carries is the name: no photos, no descriptions and no claims about any animal beyond what it is called.
Press Draw for a set of animals.
Press space or Draw for a fresh set. With repeats off each animal comes out once, so the all pool deals at most 200 in one press.
One per line, or separated by commas: up to 200 of them, 40 characters each. They join the pool whichever group is chosen and are labelled Yours in the list, so this week’s six are not lost when you switch to birds.
Common questions
- How do I draw only birds, or only marine animals?
- Press the chip above the list: All, Land, Marine, Birds or Invertebrates. The chip is the pool, not a label on the result, so with Birds on every name dealt comes out of the 100 bird entries and nothing else can appear. Marine holds 57, land 86 and invertebrates 56, and All draws across the whole list of 299. The readout under the stage names the group in use and the row beneath it says how many that pool holds right now, which is the number that matters when repeats are off.
- Can I add my own animals to the list?
- Yes. The box under the stage takes your own animals, one per line or separated by commas, up to 200 of them and 40 characters each. They join the pool whichever group chip is on, so this week's six do not disappear when you switch to Birds, and they are labelled Yours in the drawn list so it is always clear which names were added and which came from the built-in list. If you add a name the list already holds, such as Narwhal while Marine is on, it is folded into the entry that is already there rather than dealt twice. Your additions are kept in this browser only: they are never sent anywhere, and Start over at the top of the page forgets them.
- Can the same animal come up twice in one draw?
- Only with Repeats on. With Repeats off, which is how the tool starts, the draw is a shuffle: every animal dealt is different, and asking for more than the pool holds is refused in words that name both numbers, for example asking for 120 from the 100 birds. With Repeats on each pick is an independent draw over the whole pool, so the same animal can come up twice in the same set, and the only ceiling is 200 names in one press.
- How are the four groups decided?
- They are a filter for a game, not a taxonomy, and the tool says so rather than dressing it up. A penguin is filed under bird because that is where a player looks for it, a whale and a sea turtle are filed under marine because they live in the sea, frogs, tortoises and snakes sit under land, and a crab, an octopus and a krill sit under invertebrate rather than marine. A biologist would want to qualify several of those choices. For picking a name out of a hat they are the labels that make a round work.
- How many animals does the list hold?
- 299 names: 86 land, 57 marine, 100 birds and 56 invertebrates. All of them were written for this tool from ordinary common names, so nothing here was scraped from another page, and an entry holds the name and its group label and nothing else. That is also the limit of what the tool claims: it can tell you an animal is called a shoebill, and it makes no statement about where it lives, how many there are or how it is doing.
- Is the draw actually random?
- Yes. Every pick comes from crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's cryptographic generator, and is mapped onto the pool by rejection sampling rather than by a remainder: a raw draw that lands above the last whole multiple of the pool size is thrown away and drawn again, because a remainder would hand the first few entries in the list one extra chance each. With repeats off the same source drives a Fisher-Yates shuffle, so every set of that size is equally likely. Nothing about the draw is seeded from the time of day or from anything the tool has shown before.
- Is anything uploaded, and does it need an account?
- No to both. The list ships inside the page, the draw runs in the tab, and the tool makes no network request of any kind, so the animals you add and the sets you draw stay on your own machine. The count, the repeats switch, the group and your own animals are remembered in this browser so the page opens where you left it; Start over at the top of the page clears them.
The list is written for this tool and the four group labels are the plain ones. They are a filter for picking a name out of a hat rather than a taxonomy: a penguin is filed under bird and a whale under marine, which is what a classroom game wants and what a biologist would want to qualify.