Field notes
What a card tells you.
A card is meant to teach you something about the animal, not just score it. Every part of it is either measured, cited, or clearly marked as an estimate.
Type and abilities
Each animal is given a type from where and how it lives — land, grass, water, air, bug, or poison for the venomous and toxic — with a signature ability drawn from what it is actually good at. A peregrine falcon's dive is not flavour text; it is the fastest movement of any animal on Earth.
Stats you can check
Speed, mass, and lifespan come from published references, and the card shows which source each figure came from. Where no measurement exists for a species, the number is derived from its close relatives and labelled as an estimate rather than dressed up as fact.
Diet and feeding
Cards carry what an animal eats and a plain caution about feeding it. For pets that means the foods that are genuinely dangerous. For wildlife the honest answer is usually not to feed them at all: human food makes wild animals ill and dependent. Where notes are true of a whole family rather than one species, the card says so.
Rarity follows conservation status
Rarity is not tuned for the game. It is taken from IUCN Red List assessments, which means a rare card is a rare animal, and the top tier belongs to species that no longer exist in the wild.
| Tier | Conservation status | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | Least Concern | Doing fine. Most of what you will meet. |
| Uncommon | Near Threatened | Not in trouble yet, but heading that way. |
| Rare | Vulnerable | At real risk if current pressures continue. |
| Ultra Rare | Endangered | A high risk of extinction in the wild. |
| Epic | Critically Endangered | On the edge. Very few remain. |
| Legendary | Extinct in the Wild | Gone from the wild. A card you should never be able to earn. |
Watching well
The whole game is played at a distance. Use zoom instead of steps, never corner or handle an animal, leave nests and dens alone, and if a creature changes its behaviour because of you, you are already too close. A photo is never worth stressing an animal for.