World Encyclopedia of Animals

Seven of the planet’s most extraordinary animals, hand-painted and shrunk to the palm of your hand — each a museum-grade trophy bust, each with a magnetic head that doubles as a fridge magnet. This isn’t a shelf of figures. It’s a pocket natural history museum, and every exhibit comes with a story worth retelling.

Siberian Tiger

The largest cat that ever lived, and the only tiger to make a home of the snow. Once down to forty animals, now cautiously recovered — a rare conservation success.

Caracal

Named ‘black ear’ in Turkish, the caracal can leap ten feet to pluck a bird from the sky — one of the most explosive athletes in the cat family.

Serval

The longest legs and largest ears of any cat, and a hunting success rate near 50% — the serval strikes prey it can hear but cannot see.

Jaguar

Pound for pound, the hardest bite of any big cat — strong enough to pierce a skull or crack a turtle shell. The apex predator of the Americas, and a powerful swimmer.

Pallas’s Cat

House-cat-sized, with the densest fur of any feline and a famously expressive round face — the manul endures the frozen Central Asian steppe where few predators can.

Asiatic Golden Cat

Cloaked in coats from burnished gold to solid black, the secretive ‘fire cat’ is one of Asia’s least-understood felines — revered in folklore, rarely seen in life.

Spotted Hyaena

Not a cowardly scavenger but a skilled hunter in a female-led society as complex as some primates’ — the spotted hyaena is the savanna’s most misunderstood animal.