Recently I noticed a pattern on my Mac. Every time I saw my dock or even my process list I noticed something weird. A lot of my running applications where influenced by mother nature and especially animals. I then opened my Applications directory to see what else was in there that resembled animals or something similar. I was really surprised with my findings. After a bit more research I compiled a list of the top animal kingdom influenced Mac Apps. Note that some of these apps come also to Windows, Linux and even mobile platforms.

So here is the list I put up:

Elephants never forget!

10. Evernote: Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Fugu: Japanese word for pufferfish

9. Fugu: Fugu is a graphical frontend to the commandline Secure File Transfer application (SFTP).

Rubber Ducks are timeless

8. Cyberduck: Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac. It features an easy to use interface that allows to toggle between bookmarks and the browser outline view. For editing files, it provides a seamless integration with several external editors.

A paw that grabs your attention!

7. Growl: Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X – it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.

Azurues/Vuze: Poisonous tree frog

6. Azureus/Vuze: Azureus is a BitTorrent client written in Java. The BitTorrent protocol is a new way of exchanging or distributing data over the Internet. Downloading also means uploading, and the amounts of each are linked, to ensure fairness and rapidity in the spread of the file at hand.

A blue bird that 'tweets'

5. Twitterific: Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or “tweets” to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

Weird Green Duck

4. Adium: Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X, released under the GNU GPL and developed by the Adium team. With Adium, you can connect to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services and then chat with other people using those services.

Thunderbird is a Mythical creature

3. Thunderbird: Mozilla’s Thunderbird email application is more powerful than ever. It’s now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail.

Firefox aka "Red Panda"

2. Firefox: The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 3, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.

Box artwork for Mac OS X. Left to right: Cheetah/Puma (1), Jaguar (2), Panther (3), Tiger (4), and Leopard (5). - Source: Wikipedia

1. OS X: The root of all ‘evil’. Where everything started. Since OS X, all the upcomming versions of this OS where named after animals and especially big cats. The most recent one, planned to be released in 2009, will also be named after another big cat called ‘Snow Leopard’.

If I missed something that you thing it can make this list, drop a comment below.