Mass Audubon is Massachusetts' largest nature conservation nonprofit, with over 38,000 acres of land throughout the state.

Birds: https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/birds

Insects & Arachnids: https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/insects-arachnids

Reptiles & Amphibians: https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/reptiles-amphibians

Mammals: https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/mammals

Search Page: https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/nature-wildlife-search

Massachusetts wildlife library: https://www.mass.gov/lists/massachusetts-wildlife-library

List of Mammals: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/mammals-in-massachusetts

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Pit vipers (several species, including Cryptelytrops albolabris, above) Pit vipers, as well as some pythons and boas, can sense the body heat of their prey from several feet away. Small pit organs on the snakes' faces detect infrared radiation, allowing them to create a thermal profile of, say, a nearby mouse. Nerves connect the pit organs to the brain's somatosensory system, which processes the sense of touch, suggesting that the snakes literally feel the heat. In 2010, scientists identified the heat-sensing receptor molecule. The human version of this receptor is thought to be responsible for the mild burn that comes with swigging carbonated drinks, as well as the stronger burn of wasabi. Image: Thomas Brown/Flickr (viper)/David Julius lab, via Nature (mouse)

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Lyrebird (Menura) The Australian lyrebird loves to sing songs to woo its mates. The male’s courtship display includes beautiful tunes that each individual creates, mixed in with a bunch of stolen sounds from its environment. Because they have the most complexly-muscled vocal chords of any songbird, lyrebirds can reproduce an insane variety of sounds both natural and artificial, including chainsaws, car engines, barking dogs, and human voices. If you ever get bitten by a radioactive lyrebird, you can probably expect a Top 40 pop career while moonlighting as a masked vigilante fighting crime with the power of voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y Image: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos/Wikimedia Video: BBCWorldwide/Youtube

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Elephant (Loxodonta) Imagine being able to lift a one-ton weight with your face. Well, elephants can easily hoist about that much with their trunks. These long appendages are a combination of nose and mouth. Flexible and boneless, with a prehensile tip, elephant trunks serve many purposes: They can function as snorkels and hoses, forks and fingers, pokers and peanut-crackers. Elephants aren’t alone in their ability to do amazing things with their faces. The trap-jaw ant (Odontomachus bauri) can slam its jaws shut faster than you can drive a car down the freeway – between 75 and 140 miles per hour. In so doing, the ants create enough propulsive force to launch themselves into the air, sometimes landing more than 15 inches away. That’s like an average-size person enthusiastically chomping on a carrot and winding up 100 feet away. Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/WikimediaMuhammad Mahdi Karim

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) Hyenas can eat pretty much anything. Their powerful jaws can crush bone, and they can consume up to a third of their body weight in meat in a single meal. Fresh kills, rotting corpses -- it's all good. They've even been known to consume anthrax-ridden cattle carcasses without ill effects. But even this super stomach has its kryptonite: Hyenas can't digest hair, hooves, and horns. Those bits get barfed up in pellets. Image: lydurs/Flickr

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) A well-made, conscientiously maintained automobile lasts a few hundred thousand miles. To a Laysan albatross, that's a couple years' travel. Nesting in the mid-Pacific and feeding from the tip of South America all the way to Alaska, the birds can fly 50,000 miles in a single year. Wisdom, a Midway Atoll-dwelling albatross tagged in 1956 and considered the world's oldest bird, has flown between 2 and 3 million miles in her lifetime. Image: Duncan/Flickr

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/animal-superpowers/

Flea (Siphonaptera) Boing! Annoyingly, fleas are the most super-powered of the super jumpers. Their explosive power comes from a coil of energy-storing protein that acts somewhat like a spring. Located in the flea’s thorax, the spring transfers energy down through the flea’s legs, until it reaches and compresses the bug’s toes. Then, boom goes the flea, sometimes traveling roughly 200 times its body length. Other super jumpers include kangaroo rats (able to spring a distance 45 times their body length), jumping spiders (100 times their body length), and tree frogs (150 times). Video: Cambridge University/YouTube

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/watch/extraordinary-animals-with-real-superpowers

You wouldn’t want to touch a poison dart frog – they secrete toxins through their skin. Their bright colouring advertises their toxicity to potential predators like a neon sign: “Stay away!” Ingestion of these poisons can cause breathing problems, coma or even death, just like Rogue’s touch.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/watch/extraordinary-animals-with-real-superpowers

The mantis shrimp is quite possibly the coolest animal on the planet. Not only might it be able to see colours that humans can only dream of, but it can punch with the same velocity as a speeding bullet. Due to the speed of this strike, the water around its punch boils making tiny bubbles. When these bubbles pop they make a shockwave so powerful it creates bursts of light.