Animal Wheel

The animal wheel is a random animal picker: it is already loaded with 30 animals that children and adults alike can name, act out and draw, so the first spin gives you an animal for whatever game or lesson you have in mind.

What is on the wheel

Thirty animals we chose for being instantly recognisable rather than for being a scientific sample: 7 pets and farm animals (dog, cat, horse, cow, pig, sheep, rabbit), 13 wild land animals from lions and elephants to kangaroos and koalas, 4 birds, 3 sea animals and 3 reptiles and amphibians. They are grouped in that order, so a group is a block of neighbouring lines. Every animal appears once, so each has a 1 in 30 chance — 3.33% — until you change the list.

Ways people use an animal wheel

• Charades and impressions: spin, then act the animal out without a sound while the others guess.
• Drawing prompt: spin for the animal to sketch, or spin twice and draw a mix of both.
• Class projects: switch on "Remove the winner" and spin once per student, so everyone researches a different animal.
• Twenty questions: one player spins in secret and the rest ask yes-or-no questions until they name it.
• Story starter: spin for the hero of a bedtime story.

Making it your own animal list

Delete the lines you do not need — keep only the first seven for a farm-and-pets wheel for small children — or add more animals under the list; the wheel redraws as you type. There is no separate weights field: type an animal twice and it counts as two entries, so "Dog" on two lines out of 31 has a 6.45% chance, and the result reports that real figure.

Getting the 30 animals back

Edits are saved in this browser for this page only, so the animal wheel and the plain wheel keep separate lists. "Restore all" puts back the animals that "Remove the winner" took off, and "Restore the preset" replaces any edits with the original 30. Nothing is uploaded: a shared link carries the entries inside the link itself.