Tree of Life
All life is one family
Every living thing is related to every other. But looks can fool you. Guess first, then compare any two living things and see when their lines parted.
Who is closer?
Tap the two you think are most closely related.
Looks can mislead. What counts is who shares the most recent ancestor, and DNA and features inherited from that ancestor reveal it.
Compare any two
Pick two living things. Tap a box to change it, then search or choose below.
Quick picks
Times are median estimates from TimeTree. Recent dates can be off by millions of years, the oldest ones by a hundred million years or more. Bacteria and archaea are not dated here.
All groups
Every group in this tree, from bacteria to the families of mammals. Search, or tap a group to open what it contains.
Branches
Loading the tree of life…
Classification: Open Tree of Life taxonomy (living groups with a genetic record). Names: Wikidata (CC0). Divergence times: TimeTree 5. Pairwise divergence times: TimeTree 5 (Kumar et al. 2022, Molecular Biology and Evolution 39: msac174, doi:10.1093/molbev/msac174), fetched with tools/tree_ages.py. Species counts in the short texts: Mammal Diversity Database, Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes, Zhang 2013 (Zootaxa). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each photo.