Metazooa

Metazooa is a daily biology puzzle where you play evolutionary detective, identifying a mystery animal by building a taxonomic family tree in 20 guesses or fewer.

Each day brings a new animal hidden somewhere in the vast kingdom Metazoa. Your job is to narrow it down by guessing other animals. Each wrong guess reveals how closely related your guess is to the answer, branching out a shared evolutionary tree by taxonomic rank: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

• Type any animal name to make a guess.
• Each wrong guess shows where your animal and the mystery animal diverge on the tree of life.
• The more taxonomy your guess shares with the answer, the warmer you're getting.
• You have 20 guesses to solve it.
• A new mystery animal appears daily.

For example, if the answer is "human" and you guess "chimpanzee," you'll see a branch showing you share the same order (Primates) and family (Hominidae), but split at the genus level. Guess "dolphin" and you'll only share the class (Mammalia) before diverging.

Why we like it:

• ✅Teaches real evolutionary relationships in a way that sticks.
• ✅Rewards both wild guessing and methodical taxonomy knowledge.
• ✅That aha moment when the tree finally clicks is pure joy.

Hint: Start broad. Guess a fish, a bird, a mammal, an insect. Lock down the class early, then narrow by order and family. Don't waste guesses on animals too similar until you've mapped the bigger branches.