Metazooa

What is Metazooa?

Metazooa hides one creature somewhere inside the sprawling animal family tree. Name any animal, and the game reveals how far your guess travels alongside the Mystery Animal before their evolutionary paths split.

Every wrong answer grows the phylogenetic tree and gives you another piece of biological evidence. A distant guess may reveal almost nothing, while reaching the correct order, family, or genus can corner the target fast. You have 20 guesses to find the daily animal before it escapes into the wilderness.

Metazooa Game Rules (The Catch / The Trap)

The daily hunt follows this evolutionary trail:

GUESS AN ANIMAL → REVEAL SHARED TAXONOMY → GROW THE TREE → NARROW THE BRANCH

• One Mystery Animal per day: Every player hunts for the same hidden creature.
• Twenty guesses: You MUST identify the exact animal before all 20 attempts are used.
• Search and submit: Enter a recognized animal name from the game's suggestion list.
• Wrong guesses become clues: Each submitted animal appears on the phylogenetic tree beside the hidden answer.
• Shared ranks show proximity: A guess may connect through a phylum, class, order, family, genus, or another taxonomic group.
• Deeper branches mean warmer guesses: Sharing an order is more useful than sharing only a broad animal clade; sharing a genus means the answer is extremely close.
• Taxon panels provide context: The game can show descriptions and images for groups revealed during the hunt.
• Exact animal wins: The puzzle ends when your guess matches the Mystery Animal.

The trap is that animals that look similar are not always close relatives. A dolphin resembles a fish but belongs with mammals, while crocodiles share a more recent evolutionary branch with birds than with lizards.

Shared broad clade → still cold

Shared class → useful direction

Shared order or family → getting close

Shared genus → prepare the final strike

How To Play Metazooa?

Step 1: Test a distant branch

Player Guesses: Octopus

Game Response: The octopus and Mystery Animal separate near the broad animal branches.

What This Means: The target is probably not a mollusk. Move toward vertebrates instead of exploring squid, snails, or clams.

Step 2: Probe the vertebrate tree

Player Guesses: Salmon

Result: The shared path extends through the bony vertebrate branch before splitting.

Shared branch: Euteleostomi

Next Constraint: The Mystery Animal could be a fish or one of the land vertebrates descended from the same larger branch.

Step 3: Test for mammals

Player Guesses: Human

Result: The tree reaches deep into the placental mammals.

What This Means: Birds, reptiles, amphibians, and most fish are now poor directions. The target is a mammal, but not a primate.

Step 4: Close in on the order

Player Guesses: Wolf

Result:

Shared order: Carnivora

The Mystery Animal belongs among carnivorous mammals. Cats, bears, hyenas, seals, and related groups are now much stronger possibilities.

Step 5: Follow the closest branch

Player Guesses: Lion

Result:

Shared genus: Panthera

Only a small group remains. You submit Tiger, the final branches connect, and the Mystery Animal is found.

Metazooa Strategy & Tips

Start with animals from sharply different branches. A mammal, bird, fish, insect, and mollusk can map the broad structure faster than five closely related mammals.

Once the tree reveals a class or order, stop wasting guesses on distant groups. Concentrate on representatives from different families inside the confirmed branch.

Use familiar animals as taxonomic probes. Human, chicken, salmon, frog, butterfly, spider, and octopus can quickly test major sections of the animal kingdom.

Read the information panel whenever an unfamiliar group appears. Its description and examples may reveal which kinds of animals remain possible.

Switch to the table view when the tree becomes crowded. Comparing each guess and its closest shared rank can make the next move easier to spot.