How to play Metazooa
Metazooa is an animal taxonomy guessing game. Search for an animal and find the deepest classification node it shares with the hidden target. With each guess, read the tree to narrow the search from broad animal groups toward a single species. This practice edition includes 130 curated animals and a fixed ENA taxonomy snapshot.
Guess an animal by name
Type a common name, scientific name or supported alias, then choose a result. Use the arrow keys and Enter for keyboard play. You have up to 20 valid guesses. Repeated or invalid choices do not use a turn.
Read the shared ancestor
The feedback shows the deepest common node in the two classification paths. Lion and tiger share Panthera. Domestic cat and lion share Felidae. An animal that shares only Metazoa is on a much more distant branch of this classification tree.
Follow the displayed classification path
The tree displays the guessed animal, not the secret target. The highlighted row marks its deepest shared ancestor with the target. “Shared nodes” is the number of matching nodes in this snapshot; it is not a percentage of DNA or a date of evolutionary divergence.
Use the site’s stated dataset
This edition uses ENA taxonomic metadata retrieved on 24 October 2026. Some ranks are omitted in that source: human and chimpanzee share Hominidae here, and dog and wolf share Canis here. This is a practice dataset, with its own daily animals and scoring.
Daily puzzles and saved progress
Daily puzzles reset at midnight UTC and use this site’s independent version-one schedule. Switching modes keeps your current daily and practice progress separately. The game checks the UTC date while open and on returning to the page. Changing difficulty keeps a started puzzle and applies to the next puzzle. Completed daily results count once per date. Local records cover the last 50 finished puzzles and are not synced between devices.
Keyboard and touch
Focus the search field, type a name, move with the arrow keys and press Enter to submit a result. On touch devices, tap the result. The search is a complete alternative to direct diagram or map input.
Play Metazooa · Metazooa Taxonomy Guide – Animal Names and Shared Ancestors