Animals as location clues

Naming a species and recalling where it lives is the shallow version. The deeper read is anatomical: ear size is a thermostat, so an elephant with small ears is a forest animal and one with large ears lives in open sun. Two humps and a heavy coat mean a cold desert, not a hot one. A nose built as a filter belongs to a dusty migration. The body records the conditions it evolved under.

Behaviour narrows it further. A sentinel rotating through a group, a bird dropping bones onto rock, a primate that lives on grass — each is a strategy that only pays off under particular constraints. And flightlessness, gigantism and tameness together usually mean an island that mainland predators never reached.