20 most cutest animals

Like its larger cousin, the pygmy hippopotamus has stumpy legs, a blunt snout and extraordinary swimming skills.

With an unnervingly wide-eyed stare, the slow loris hails from the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia and is notable for its plush but strong limbs.

Maybe bulging eyes, slightly down-turned mouth, curly, prehensile tail and extremely long tongue, the chameleon is one of the more appealing reptiles.

Meerkats are a type of mongoose that live in the deserts from the Kalahari of Bostwana to the Namib of Namibia, South Africa and parts of Angola.

Koalas aren't as sweet as they look.Koala experts say the creatures' behavior most often varies between mildly cranky to downright bad-tempered.

From "Mr. Popper's Penguins" to "Happy Feet," the squat, aquatic birds with their sleek, debonair coats have a secure position in pop culture.

Red pandas share little in terms of appearance with their monochromatic cousins, the great pandas.

About four meters long, the white, baby-faced beluga whale, which makes its home in the colder seas of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, is about one-fifth the size of a blue whale.

Sure, real clown fish can't talk or pop open their eyes for that comic Pixar effect, but they can do cooler things, such as switch genders.

An indigenous South American rodent, the chinchilla offers another example of how dangerous it can be to be cuddly.

The roe deer is chestnut-brown, roughly the size of a goat and native to England.

In captivity, bottlenose dolphins are praised for their intelligence and therapeutic qualities -- swimming with dolphins is supposedlygood for one's mental health.

Domesticated for thousands of years, the alpaca is valued for its gloriously fleecy hair, which is used to make sweaters.

The bee hummingbird from Cuba, the smallest bird in the world, isn't only tiny -- it weighs less than a U.S. penny -- it's fast, beating its wings up to 80 times a second.

Sea otters are as clever as they are cuddly.They use rocks as tools to crack open clams and mussels for food and sleep floating face-up on the surface of the water with tangled kelp anchoring them in place.

It's no coincidence that many animals on this list happen to be threatened, vulnerable or endangered species.

The black and white coloring, fat butt and contemplative way they chew their bamboo: one might never stop listing the qualities that make the giant panda so charming.

As the smallest primate in the world, the arboreal, nocturnal Philippine tarsier has all the basic qualities of cute: enormous eyes set in a tiny body no bigger than a human fist and tiny knobbly paws with which it grasps onto tree branches.

Tarsiers are notoriously unhappy in captivity.

The fennec fox is a sandy nocturnal desert fox, immortalized in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince" as the fox who wanted to be tamed.

As the smallest of the foxes (smaller than the domestic cat), with oversized ears like pumpkin leaves and tiny pointed faces, the fennec fox looks adorably, temptingly tamable.

Consequently, commercial trapping is the greatest threat to the fennec fox; it's highly sought after in the captive pet trade and often captured and put on display for tourists visiting the area.