Reading rarity and habitats
AnimalDex · 26 September 2026
What common, rare, epic and legendary mean, and what the catalogue habitats and continents are for.
Two scales that must not be mixed
Each AnimalDex card shows a game rarity and an XP value: common, rare, epic or legendary. It also shows a habitat and a continent. Those words describe the game catalogue. They are not an IUCN category, not a legal protection, and not a promise you will see the animal. Mixing the two scales is the surest way to prepare a walk badly, or to approach too close because “it is only common”.
Game rarity estimates how reachable the species is for a player photographing real animals, across the mix in the catalogue: farm, town, woodland, shore and zoo. A sparrow is common because it lives near houses. A zoo species can be legendary in the game because few players will meet it, even if the enclosure shows it every day. The reverse exists too: an animal seldom seen in the wild can be easier in a zoo than on a red list.
The four rarities
Common is practice. Ten XP, species you can look for near home or in a farmyard: sparrow, blackbird, pigeon, hen, cat, cow. Common does not mean the animal may be approached at will. It means you can learn the gesture — watch, frame, confirm — without planning an expedition.
Rare is a dedicated outing. Fifty XP. The fox at dawn, the buzzard on a post, the woodpecker on a trunk: you need a place and an hour, not a five-minute pause at the door. Rare in the game is not a synonym of protected. You still check the real status in the card’s sources before you leave the paths.
Epic, one hundred XP, assumes a known site, a season, or a park that keeps the species. You do not force it on a random afternoon. You prepare the scientific name so you do not confuse it with the neighbour from the same habitat.
Legendary, five hundred XP, is the exception. Many players will see it only in a park, on a guided trip, or never. That is normal. Legendary rarity does not allow a paid forbidden approach, or leaving a closed path. A distant honest photo completes the card as well as a portrait.
Habitats
Habitat is the coherent setting in which to look, not a cage. Farmyard: pastures, pens, farm buildings, while in practice staying behind the fence. Town: parks, streets, roofs, ornamental ponds. Woodland: woods, edges, hedged country, paths. Sea: coast, estuary, large river, dyke. Zoo: a zoological park, for species the catalogue does not place in the player’s local countryside.
An animal can be seen outside its card habitat. A fox crosses a town. A mute swan lives on an urban lake as much as on a gravel pit. The card states the most useful setting in which to look, not the only legal place. If you see it elsewhere, the photo still counts. You do not rewrite the catalogue habitat for that: it serves the whole collection, not your single sighting.
Continents
The catalogue continent is a wide playing range: Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, or worldwide for domestic and cosmopolitan species. It is not a map of common presence, and it is not permission to transport an animal. The domestic cat is worldwide because it lives with people, not because its wild form has that range.
For a European species, the card also offers an INPN link besides Wikipedia, GBIF and the IUCN. Those links are searches on the scientific name. They lead to the real databases. AnimalDex does not copy their population figures, which change and which a game card would freeze too fast.
How to use this before a walk
First choose the habitat you will actually be in today. Filter the collection on that habitat if you want a short list. Read two cards, not twenty. Note the mark and the species it is confused with. Go for those. The daily challenge may suggest something else: if it falls on a habitat you do not have to hand, ignore it for this walk. The bonus XP does not justify a risky detour.
Back home, compare the photo with the mark. If it fits, confirm. If it fits the neighbouring card, open that one. If nothing is sharp, keep the image without confirming. The collection grows by correct names. Game pages that combine rarity, habitat and continent as URL filters are not pages to index: the stable content is the species card and these guides.
Premium at €9.99 removes advertising and adds game bonuses. It changes neither rarity, nor habitat, nor access to the texts. Every reader, signed in or not, sees the same card.
AnimalDex at animaldex.fr is not animaldex.app. The rarities described here belong to this catalogue. Another application may use the same words for something else. On this site they mean what is written above.
