Random Organism Generator

Five real organisms per press, from animals to archaea, each with its scientific name, kingdom and one fact.

Azotobacter vinelandiiBacterium. A free-living bacterium of soils that fixes nitrogen.
Great Basin bristlecone pinePinus longaeva. Plant. A long-living pine of the higher mountains of California, Nevada and Utah.
Neurospora crassaFungus. A red bread mold, first reported from French bakeries in 1843.
Shewanella oneidensisBacterium. A bacterium first isolated from Lake Oneida, New York, in 1988, able to live with or without oxygen.
Thermococcus kodakarensisArchaeon. A heat-loving archaeon, one of the best-studied of its genus.

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How it works

This random organism generator draws from 150 real living things in all six kingdoms: animals, plants, fungi, protists, bacteria and archaea. Every card gives the scientific name, the kingdom and one line on where it lives or what it does.

Read the full guide

Classify before you look

Press Hide all facts and the cards show names alone. Say the kingdom of each, then tap to check: Giant kelp is a protist, not a plant, and Reindeer lichen is a fungus. The Any kingdom menu keeps the draw to one kingdom.

The organisms of the lab

The last entry of that menu, Model organisms of the lab, holds the 35 whose articles call them a model: the fruit fly, the zebrafish, thale cress, baker's yeast and Escherichia coli among them.

Tips

Most bacteria and archaea have no everyday name, so their cards lead with the scientific one.

Questions and answers

What are the six kingdoms of life?

Animals, plants, fungi, protists, bacteria and archaea, the scheme long used in school textbooks in the United States. Textbooks elsewhere have used five kingdoms.

Why is kelp a protist and not a plant?

The kingdom on each card comes from the GBIF backbone, which files kelps and diatoms under Chromista and amoebas under Protozoa. This page prints both as Protists. Green algae and red algae stay with the plants, as the backbone has them.

Is every organism here a species?

Yes. Each card is one species, with the accepted scientific name the GBIF backbone gives it. Where a familiar name is now a synonym, the card adds it after Also known as.

Are there germs that make people ill on the list?

No. Organisms known mainly for causing disease are left out, and no card describes an illness. The bacteria and archaea here live in soil, the sea, hot springs, cheese and the gut.

All 150 organisms

Animals 33

African clawed frog Xenopus laevis. Animal. An aquatic frog of Africa, named for the short black claws on its feet.
Antarctic krill Euphausia superba. Animal. A small swimming crustacean of the Southern Ocean that lives in huge swarms.
Atlantic horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus. Animal. A horseshoe crab of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast of North America.
Aurelia aurita Animal. A true jellyfish of the north Atlantic.
Axolotl Ambystoma mexicanum. Animal. A salamander that stays in the water all its life and keeps its outer gills as an adult.
Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus. Animal. A baleen whale, the largest animal known to have ever existed.
Caenorhabditis elegans Animal. A transparent roundworm about 1 mm long that lives in temperate soil.
Chambered nautilus Nautilus pompilius. Animal. The best-known nautilus; its shell is lined with nacre and coils in a nearly perfect spiral.
Ciona intestinalis Animal. A tunicate with a soft, translucent, column-like body, found around the world.
Common octopus Octopus vulgaris. Animal. A mollusk of the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, one of the most studied of all octopus species.
Common starfish Asterias rubens. Animal. The most familiar starfish of the north-east Atlantic, with five arms.

Show all 150 organisms (139 more)

Animals, continued

Daphnia pulex Animal. The most common water flea, and the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced.
Emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri. Animal. The tallest and heaviest living penguin, found only in Antarctica.
European lancelet Branchiostoma lanceolatum. Animal. A sea animal with a notochord but no backbone.
Fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Animal. A small fly drawn to rotting fruit, often found in orchards and kitchens.
Garden snail Cornu aspersum. Animal. A land snail, perhaps the most widely known of all land molluscs.
Giant squid Architeuthis dux. Animal. A squid of the deep ocean that grows to a tremendous size.
Giant tubeworm Riftia pachyptila. Animal. A worm of the deep sea that lives fixed in place near geologically active regions.
Green sea turtle Chelonia mydas. Animal. A large sea turtle of tropical and subtropical seas around the world.
House mouse Mus musculus. Animal. A small rodent with a pointed snout and large rounded ears that lives alongside people.
Immortal jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. Animal. A small jellyfish that can turn back into its young polyp stage after reaching maturity.
Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis. Animal. A large monitor lizard found only on a few Indonesian islands, Komodo among them.
Lumbricus terrestris Animal. A large, reddish earthworm thought to be native to Western Europe and now spread around the world.
Monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus. Animal. A milkweed butterfly, among the most familiar butterflies of North America.
Naked mole-rat Heterocephalus glaber. Animal. A burrowing rodent native to the Horn of Africa and parts of Kenya.
Peacock mantis shrimp Odontodactylus scyllarus. Animal. A large mantis shrimp of the seabed across the Indo-Pacific.
Platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Animal. An egg-laying mammal of eastern Australia that spends part of its life in water.
Purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Animal. A sea urchin of the eastern edge of the Pacific, from Mexico to British Columbia.
Schmidtea mediterranea Animal. A freshwater triclad of southern Europe and Tunisia whose whole body can regrow.
Starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. Animal. A small sea anemone native to the east coast of the United States.
West Indian Ocean coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae. Animal. One of two living coelacanths, closer kin to lungfish and four-limbed animals than to the common ray-finned fishes.
Western honey bee Apis mellifera. Animal. The most common honey bee in the world; it lives in colonies.
Zebrafish Danio rerio. Animal. A hardy aquarium fish native to South Asia.

Plants 31

African baobab Adansonia digitata. Plant. The most widespread of the baobab trees, native to Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula.
Asian cultivated rice Oryza sativa. Plant. The more common of the two cultivated rice species, first domesticated in the Yangtze River basin of China.
Bracken Pteridium aquilinum. Plant. A fern of temperate and subtropical regions in both hemispheres.
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Plant. A single-cell green alga about 10 micrometres across that swims with two flagella.
Coconut Cocos nucifera. Plant. A member of the palm family and the only living species of its genus, found on tropical coasts.
Common dandelion Taraxacum officinale. Plant. A perennial of the daisy family; its yellow flower heads turn into round balls of tufted fruit that the wind carries off.
Common duckweed Lemna minor. Plant. An aquatic freshwater plant of the arum family, used as animal fodder.
Common sunflower Helianthus annuus. Plant. A large annual of the daisy family, harvested for its edible seeds.
Common wheat Triticum aestivum. Plant. A cultivated wheat, also called bread wheat, that makes up about 95% of the wheat grown worldwide.
Field horsetail Equisetum arvense. Plant. A horsetail native to the arctic and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.
Giant sequoia Sequoiadendron giganteum. Plant. A conifer of the western Sierra Nevada of California; its specimens are the largest trees on Earth.
Ginkgo Ginkgo biloba. Plant. A tree native to East Asia, the last living species of an order that first appeared over 290 million years ago.
Great Basin bristlecone pine Pinus longaeva. Plant. A long-living pine of the higher mountains of California, Nevada and Utah.
Irish moss Chondrus crispus. Plant. A red alga that grows along the rocky Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America.
Maize Zea mays. Plant. A tall, stout grass that produces cereal grain, also known as corn.
Marchantia polymorpha Plant. A large liverwort found worldwide, with separate male and female plants.
Mimosa pudica Plant. A creeping plant of the pea family whose leaves fold inward and droop when touched.
Potato Solanum tuberosum. Plant. A starchy tuber vegetable native to the Americas, from a perennial of the nightshade family.
Quaking aspen Populus tremuloides. Plant. A deciduous tree native to the cooler areas of North America.
Resurrection plant Selaginella lepidophylla. Plant. A plant of the Chihuahuan Desert, renowned for surviving almost complete drying out.
Sacred lotus Nelumbo nucifera. Plant. An aquatic plant, one of two living species of its family.
Sago cycad Cycas revoluta. Plant. A cycad native to southern Japan, grown as an ornamental plant.
Saguaro Carnegiea gigantea. Plant. A tree-like cactus native to the Sonoran Desert.
Sea lettuce Ulva lactuca. Plant. An edible green alga.
Spreading earthmoss Physcomitrium patens. Plant. A moss used as a model organism for studies of plant evolution and development. Also known as Physcomitrella patens.
Thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant. A small plant of the mustard family, common along roadsides and generally thought of as a weed.
Titan arum Amorphophallus titanum. Plant. A flowering plant found only in rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Tomato Solanum lycopersicum. Plant. A plant of the nightshade family that came from western South America.
Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula. Plant. A carnivorous plant native to wetlands of North Carolina and South Carolina.
Volvox carteri Plant. A freshwater green alga that forms small spherical colonies.
Welwitschia Welwitschia mirabilis. Plant. A plant of Angola and Namibia, the only species of its genus.

Fungi 22

Agaricus bisporus Fungus. The cultivated mushroom, native to grasslands of Eurasia and North America and grown in more than 70 countries.
Baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Fungus. A yeast that has been used in baking since ancient times.
Black bread mold Rhizopus stolonifer. Fungus. One of the most common fungi in the world, found on every continent.
Black truffle Tuber melanosporum. Fungus. A truffle native to Southern Europe.
Common orange lichen Xanthoria parietina. Fungus. A leafy lichen known for its bright yellow to orange color.
Fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Fungus. A yeast with rod-shaped cells, used as a model organism in molecular and cell biology.
Ganoderma applanatum Fungus. A bracket fungus found around the world that can be used as a surface to draw on.
Giant puffball Calvatia gigantea. Fungus. A puffball mushroom of meadows, fields and deciduous forests in late summer and autumn.
Golden chanterelle Cantharellus cibarius. Fungus. The type species of the chanterelles, a commonly eaten mushroom.
Gray shag Coprinopsis cinerea. Fungus. A mushroom used as a model organism for studying how mushrooms develop.
Lion's mane Hericium erinaceus. Fungus. A tooth fungus that grows in a single clump of dangling spines.
Morchella esculenta Fungus. A fungus whose fruit body grows into a yellowish sponge with large pits and ridges on a white stem.
Neurospora crassa Fungus. A red bread mold, first reported from French bakeries in 1843.
Oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus. Fungus. An edible mushroom of temperate and subtropical forests around the world.
Penicillium roqueforti Fungus. A fungus widespread in nature, used to make blue cheeses.
Pilobolus crystallinus Fungus. A fungus, known as the hat thrower, that sticks its spores to plants for grazing animals to eat.
Reindeer lichen Cladonia rangiferina. Fungus. A light-coloured cup lichen, found mainly in alpine tundra and very hardy in the cold.
Rhizocarpon geographicum Fungus. A lichen that grows on rocks in mountain areas; its patches look like a map.
Schizophyllum commune Fungus. A fungus found on rotting wood, with a mushroom like a fan.
Shaggy ink cap Coprinus comatus. Fungus. A fungus whose young fruit bodies come up as white cylinders before the bell-shaped caps open.
Shiitake Lentinula edodes. Fungus. An edible mushroom native to East Asia, grown around the globe.
Turkey tail Trametes versicolor. Fungus. A common polypore mushroom found throughout the world, shaped like a wild turkey's tail feathers.

Protists 23

Amoeba proteus Protist. A large amoeba that moves and feeds with extensions called pseudopodia.
Bladderwrack Fucus vesiculosus. Protist. A brown alga of the North Sea, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and the original source of iodine.
Bull kelp Nereocystis luetkeana. Protist. A kelp that grows below the tide line, the only species of its genus.
Dictyostelium discoideum Protist. A soil-dwelling amoeba, one of the slime molds, with single-celled and many-celled stages in its life.
Emiliania huxleyi Protist. The most abundant coccolithophore in modern oceans.
Euglena gracilis Protist. A freshwater euglenid that can feed by photosynthesis or by engulfing its food.
Giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera. Protist. The largest of all the brown algae.
Globigerina bulloides Protist. A planktonic foraminifer of the sunlit zone of the world's oceans.
Noctiluca scintillans Protist. A marine dinoflagellate found worldwide, in a green or a red form.
Oarweed Laminaria digitata. Protist. A large brown alga of the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Paramecium bursaria Protist. A ciliate that carries hundreds of green algae inside its cell and takes food from them.
Paramecium caudatum Protist. A one-celled protist covered with hair-like cilia, which it uses to move and to feed.
Phaeodactylum tricornutum Protist. A diatom, the only species of its genus, that can change the shape of its cell.
Physarum polycephalum Protist. A slime mold; in one stage of its life it is a bright yellow network of tubes.
Scrambled egg slime Fuligo septica. Protist. A yellowish slime mold found worldwide on bark, mulch and lawns.
Sea palm Postelsia palmaeformis. Protist. A kelp of the western coast of North America, on rocky shores with constant waves.
Stemonitis fusca Protist. A slime mold that fruits in clusters on dead wood, on tall brown stalks.
Stentor coeruleus Protist. A very large ciliate, up to 2 millimetres long, shaped like a long trumpet.
Sterkiella histriomuscorum Protist. A ciliate known for its highly fragmented genome. Also known as Oxytricha trifallax.
Sugar kelp Saccharina latissima. Protist. A brown alga of the north Atlantic, Arctic and north Pacific, one of the species known in Japanese cooking as kombu.
Tetrahymena thermophila Protist. A free-living protozoon of fresh water.
Thalassiosira pseudonana Protist. A marine diatom, the first marine phytoplankton with a cell nucleus chosen for whole genome sequencing.
Wolf's milk Lycogala epidendrum. Protist. A slime mold often mistaken for a fungus, found on damp rotten wood.

Bacteria 23

Azotobacter vinelandii Bacterium. A free-living bacterium of soils that fixes nitrogen.
Bacillus subtilis Bacterium. The hay bacillus, a bacterium found in soil.
Bradyrhizobium japonicum Bacterium. A nitrogen-fixing bacterium that forms nodules on the roots of legumes.
Caulobacter vibrioides Bacterium. A bacterium of freshwater lakes and streams, a model organism for studying the cell cycle. Also known as Caulobacter crescentus.
Chlorobaculum tepidum Bacterium. A green sulfur bacterium first isolated from New Zealand. Also known as Chlorobium tepidum.
Cupriavidus metallidurans Bacterium. A bacterium adapted to survive several forms of heavy metal stress.
Deinococcus radiodurans Bacterium. One of the most radiation-resistant organisms known; it also survives cold, drying out, vacuum and acid.
Escherichia coli Bacterium. A rod-shaped bacterium commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals, where most strains are a normal part of the gut.
Geobacter sulfurreducens Bacterium. A rod-shaped bacterium that reduces metals and sulphur and lives without oxygen.
Lactococcus lactis Bacterium. A bacterium used widely in making buttermilk and cheese.
Myxococcus xanthus Bacterium. A bacterium of the top layer of soil, known for preying on other microorganisms.
Nitrobacter winogradskyi Bacterium. A rod-shaped bacterium that gets its energy by oxidizing nitrite, a step of the nitrogen cycle.
Nitrosomonas europaea Bacterium. A bacterium that gets all its energy from turning ammonia into nitrite; it lives in soil, sewage and fresh water.
Nostoc commune Bacterium. A cyanobacterium found around the world; one of its common names is star jelly.
Propionibacterium freudenreichii Bacterium. A bacterium that plays an important part in the making of Emmental cheese.
Rhizobium leguminosarum Bacterium. A soil bacterium that lives in the root nodules of legumes and fixes nitrogen there.
Rhodobacter sphaeroides Bacterium. A purple bacterium that can make its energy by photosynthesis.
Shewanella oneidensis Bacterium. A bacterium first isolated from Lake Oneida, New York, in 1988, able to live with or without oxygen.
Streptococcus thermophilus Bacterium. A bacterium used to make yogurt and other fermented milk products.
Streptomyces griseus Bacterium. A bacterium commonly found in soil, well known as a producer of antibiotics.
Synechococcus elongatus Bacterium. A one-celled cyanobacterium that grows fast using sunlight.
Thermus aquaticus Bacterium. A bacterium that tolerates high temperatures, the source of the heat-resistant enzyme Taq DNA polymerase.
Thiomargarita namibiensis Bacterium. A bacterium of ocean sediments off Namibia; its genus name means sulfur pearl.

Archaea 18

Aeropyrum pernix Archaeon. A heat-loving archaeon first isolated from sediments in the sea off the coast of Japan.
Halobacterium salinarum Archaeon. An archaeon, not a bacterium despite its name, that needs very salty water and is found in salt lakes and salterns.
Haloquadratum walsbyi Archaeon. A salt-loving archaeon known for its flat, square-shaped cells, first found in a brine pool in the Sinai.
Halorubrum lacusprofundi Archaeon. A rod-shaped, salt-loving archaeon first isolated from Deep Lake in Antarctica.
Methanobrevibacter smithii Archaeon. The main methane-making archaeon of the human gut.
Methanocaldococcus jannaschii Archaeon. A methane-making archaeon that lives at 48 to 94 °C, and the first archaeon to have its whole genome sequenced.
Methanopyrus kandleri Archaeon. A rod-shaped methane maker found on the wall of a black smoker in the Gulf of California, at 84 to 110 °C.
Methanosarcina acetivorans Archaeon. A methane-producing microbe found in oil wells, trash dumps and deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Methanosarcina barkeri Archaeon. A methane-producing archaeon, the type species of its genus.
Nanoarchaeum equitans Archaeon. A marine archaeon discovered in 2002 in a hydrothermal vent off the coast of Iceland.
Nitrosopumilus maritimus Archaeon. An extremely common archaeon living in seawater.
Picrophilus torridus Archaeon. An archaeon found in soil near a hot spring in Hokkaido, Japan, where the pH was below 0.5.
Pyrococcus furiosus Archaeon. An archaeon that grows best at 100 °C.
Pyrolobus fumarii Archaeon. An archaeon known for living and reproducing at extremely high temperatures.
Sulfolobus acidocaldarius Archaeon. An archaeon of hot acid, growing best between 75 and 80 °C at pH 2 to 3.
Thermococcus kodakarensis Archaeon. A heat-loving archaeon, one of the best-studied of its genus.
Thermoplasma acidophilum Archaeon. An archaeon first isolated from a self-heating coal refuse pile, at pH 2 and 59 °C.
Thermoplasma volcanium Archaeon. An archaeon with no cell wall, isolated from acidic hydrothermal vents.

How this list was compiled: 150 real organisms from every kingdom of life, our own selection: 33 animals, 31 plants, 22 fungi, 23 protists, 23 bacteria and 18 archaea. The six kingdoms are the scheme of school biology as English Wikipedia's Kingdom (biology) article sets it out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology), read 2026-10-01): "Traditionally, textbooks from the United States and some of Canada have used a system of six kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea or Archaebacteria, and Bacteria or Eubacteria)". The kingdom on a card is never chosen by hand: it is the kingdom the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy gives the name (https://api.gbif.org/v1/species/match, read 2026-10-01; x.src is the species page, x.gbifKingdom the backbone's own kingdom), under one mapping rule. The backbone has no protist kingdom: on these rows it files amoebas, slime molds and Euglena under Protozoa, and kelps, diatoms, ciliates and dinoflagellates under Chromista, so both are printed as Protists. Nothing else is remapped, so the green algae and the red alga Irish moss, which the backbone files under Plantae, are plants on this page. The scientific name on a card is the backbone's accepted species name; where the name looked up is a synonym there, the card adds it as 'also known as'. Names of bacteria and archaea were also found in NCBI Taxonomy (https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi, read the same day). The line on each card is our own wording of the opening of the organism's English Wikipedia article (x.wiki), read 2026-10-01; a script checked the key words of every line against that text after this file was written. The group Model organisms of the lab holds the rows whose article opening uses the words model organism, model species or model for. No card carries a disease line, and organisms known mainly for making people ill are left out (owner decision RGHQ-7); Escherichia coli is here as the gut resident and lab organism its article opens on. The koji mold was left out because the backbone files it under the name of another species. Animals are kept to under a quarter of the list. Licence: Names and kingdoms from the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (CC BY 4.0); facts from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); the selection and the wording of every line are ours.