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Wild Animals Word Search

A word search dedicated to wild animals, perfect for children who love the savannah and the jungle. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: lion, tiger, elephant, giraffe, zebra, monkey, bear and wolf. Each animal opens the door to a small geography and science lesson, from habitats to diets. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for primary school classrooms, wildlife-themed lessons, or a rainy afternoon at home.

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✏️ Create your own word search

Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Wild Animals, one by one

Wild animals fascinate children because they live far away, in places most of us only see in documentaries or at the zoo. Here is a note on each of the eight animals hidden in the grid, handy for a lesson on habitats.

Lion — Called the "king of the savannah", though it actually sleeps up to twenty hours a day; it's the lionesses who hunt in groups. Its roar can be heard up to eight kilometres away.

Tiger — The largest cat in the world, and unlike house cats, it loves water and swims willingly. Its stripes are unique, just like human fingerprints.

Elephant — The largest land animal, it communicates using sounds too low for human ears to hear and never forgets places or companions.

Giraffe — At five metres tall, it has the same number of neck vertebrae as a human: just seven, but enormous. Its tongue, up to 50 centimetres long, is bluish in colour.

Zebra — Each zebra has unique stripes, which help confuse predators when the herd runs together.

Monkey — Uses tools and solves complex problems; different species live in trees, on the ground, or both, depending on their habitat.

Bear — Despite looking slow, it can run at 50 km/h and spends the winter hibernating in its den.

Wolf — Lives in highly organised packs and communicates through howls that strengthen the group's bond.

Where they live: a world tour in eight animals

Each animal in the grid lives in a different habitat, and finding them together on a world map makes a small journey. Lions, elephants, giraffes and zebras are the symbols of the African savannah, where tall grass and scattered trees support huge herds and the predators that follow them. Tigers live in the forests and swamps of Asia, monkeys in the tropical forests of Africa, Asia and America, while bears and wolves prefer the woods and mountains of the northern hemisphere.

Some of them live closer to home than you might think. Wolves, which came close to disappearing from much of western Europe in the twentieth century, have returned in many places thanks to legal protection, and brown bears still roam the forests and mountains of Europe, from Scandinavia to the Carpathians and the Pyrenees. Elephants and tigers, on the other hand, are species considered at risk of extinction, so talking about them is an easy way to introduce respect for nature.

Where to go after the search

The theme works well as a short science lesson. Here are three ways to use it:

  • Everyone at home. Draw a blank world map and ask the children to place each animal on the right continent; for the youngest, it is enough to separate the four savannah animals from the rest.
  • Plant-eaters and meat-eaters. Build two columns and let the children decide where each animal belongs: lion, tiger and wolf on one side; elephant, giraffe and zebra on the other. Bear and monkey are the right cases for talking about animals that eat a bit of everything.
  • Guess the animal. Describe an animal without naming it (“it has a very long neck and a patchy coat”) and the others look for it in the grid: the first to find it wins.

How this grid is built

The search here involves every kind of direction used in these puzzles: on 12×12 squares, three of the eight words are horizontal, two vertical and three diagonal. ELEPHANT, with eight letters, is the longest word; LION, with four, is the shortest, and it is short words like this that most easily slip away among the random letters. No word is written backwards.

A harder version

To raise the level, open the generator, choose the Hard mode and add rhinoceros, hippopotamus and kangaroo to the eight words: with diagonals running both up and down, the search needs more attention. In class, a team race also works well, with one group starting from the top of the word list and the other from the bottom.

Also in Italian

Italian names for the eight animals: leone (lion), tigre (tiger), elefante (elephant), giraffa (giraffe), zebra (zebra), scimmia (monkey), orso (bear) and lupo (wolf). To search for them in Italian, try Crucipuzzle degli Animali Selvatici.

More word searches to try

From the savannah you can move on to other habitats, from farm to sea and sky:

A longer look at using animal word searches in class and at home is in the article Animal word search puzzles.