About the Random Animal Generator
Why I built it
I built this random animal generator for one reason: the existing ones were plain text lists. I wanted a spin wheel, real facts, and something a teacher could put on a projector or a kid could use without help.
The site started as my weekend project in 2022 and grew into 8 category generators with 67 animals. I use it myself for drawing prompts and family quiz nights, which is where most of the feature ideas come from. The Drawing idea button exists because I kept asking “okay but what should the fox be doing?”
About the author
Wajid Mahmood is an animal enthusiast and hobby coder who started the Random Animal Generator as a weekend project. He maintains the site’s database of 67 animals, writes every fact card, and checks each one against a museum, encyclopaedia, or published study before it goes live. When not adding capybaras to the generator, Wajid does bird photography and is still trying to teach his parrot to talk.
How I pick animals and facts
Every animal enters the site with one fact, and every fact gets traced to a source before publishing: Encyclopaedia Britannica, WWF species profiles, museum collections such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, or the original research paper.
If the trail ends at another blog repeating the same sentence, the fact does not go up. When something already published turns out not to hold, I correct it in place and say what changed rather than deleting it quietly. In July 2026 I removed several popular claims for exactly this reason, including “a tiger’s roar paralyses prey”, “giraffes sleep 30 minutes a day”, and “pigs are the 4th smartest animal”. None of the three survived checking.
Mythical creatures get different treatment. Their cards describe the legend and, where one exists, the proposed real-world origin behind it, along with who proposed it.
What’s next
I add new animals and facts monthly, and I love hearing suggestions from readers. Planned categories include insects, reptiles, and endangered animals. Real photographs for every animal card are the next big job on the list.
If you want a category, spot a wrong fact, or have an animal photo I can use, tell me.