Ice Age Animals: Every Species in the Movies

The animals in the Ice Age films are led by three prehistoric leads: a mammoth, a ground sloth and a saber-toothed cat. The first film, Ice Age (2002), directed by Chris Wedge, sets up that trio, and the later ice age movies keep adding to the herd. The sections that follow run through the five theatrical films and the Disney+ spin-off, species by species.

How many animals are in Ice Age? The cast credits do not add up to one tidy number. They name dodos, rhinos, an aardvark, a gazelle, beavers, an elk, a condor chick and a dung beetle, and the plots add dinosaurs, raptors, a llama and an ape. If you want the named leads rather than the species, the ice age characters page covers them one by one.

The films treat the Ice Age as a playground, so the valley is crowded with very different animals, from a sloth who cannot stop talking to a Tyrannosaurus who carries him off.

The woolly mammoth is the franchise's central species, and it gives the saga its emotional spine. Manny, a grumpy woolly mammoth voiced by Ray Romano, starts Ice Age (2002) heading the opposite way from every other animal, who are all going south. Manny ice age is the herd's anchor, and by the time of Continental Drift he is a father trying to let a teenager grow up.

In Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), directed by Carlos Saldanha, Manny fears he is the last mammoth alive. He then meets Ellie ice age, a mammoth who was raised by possums and believes she is one. Their daughter, Peaches ice age, is born at the end of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) and is a teenager in Continental Drift, voiced by Keke Palmer. The Meltdown also reveals a whole herd of other mammoths, so Manny turns out not to be alone.

Across the films the mammoths cover three stages of family life: a loner who has lost his family, a couple expecting a baby, and a father facing a daughter who wants to fit in with cooler friends.

The giant ground sloth is the franchise's comic engine, and Sid, voiced by John Leguizamo, is the species' only major star. In Ice Age (2002) Sid is a clumsy, talkative ground sloth abandoned by his own group, and he ends up following Manny because nobody else will have him. Sid ice age also sets off the plot of Dawn of the Dinosaurs, when he finds three big eggs in an ice cave and decides to raise them as his own children.

The Ice Age (2002) cast list credits two further sloth parts, both listed as Female Sloth and voiced by Lorri Bagley and Jane Krakowski. Family is Sid's recurring theme, from the abandoned sloth of the first film to the eggs that hatch into baby Tyrannosaurs.

In Dawn of the Dinosaurs he grows fond of the baby dinosaurs and their mother, which makes saying goodbye to them hard.

Saber-toothed cats are the franchise's predators who switch sides. In Ice Age (2002), Soto leads a pack that wants revenge on humans, and Diego, his lieutenant, is sent to snatch a human baby. Diego, voiced by Denis Leary, instead turns on his pack, fights Soto at a cliff edge and is badly wounded saving Manny. Diego ice age then travels south with the herd.

In Continental Drift, Shira ice age, voiced by Jennifer Lopez, is a saber-toothed cat and first mate to the pirate Captain Gutt. She grows close to Diego, stays behind to slow the pirates down, and ends up joining the herd as his partner. In Collision Course, Diego and Shira are celebrated by the local kids.

The 2002 cast list also credits two bit parts as Saber-Toothed Tiger, voiced by Diedrich Bader and Alan Tudyk, alongside the named cats.

The possums are the franchise's chaos brothers, and they grow from supporting players into the leads of the Disney+ spin-off. Crash and Eddie, voiced by Seann William Scott and Josh Peck, first appear in Ice Age: The Meltdown as the possum brothers who adopted Ellie as a baby mammoth. By the time of Dawn of the Dinosaurs they follow Manny into the lost world to rescue Sid.

In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022), directed by John Donkin, the two cause an avalanche that wrecks the herd's summer home, then run off to prove they can look after themselves. Vincent Tong and Aaron Harris voice them in that film, and it ends with the brothers choosing to stay in the Lost World. You can read more on crash and eddie ice age.

The possums also explain Ellie: a mammoth raised by possums is why she thinks she is one.

Buck is a one-eyed weasel who lives among the dinosaurs and guides the herd through their world. He is introduced in Dawn of the Dinosaurs, where he leads the group through the jungle toward Lava Falls, and he is locked in a feud with a huge albino dinosaur called Rudy. Simon Pegg has voiced him since the third film.

At the end, Rudy survives his fall, so Buck chooses to stay below and keep him in check instead of going home with the herd. He returns in Collision Course, where he finds an ancient stone pillar showing that asteroids have wiped out life before. In the spin-off, Buck rescues Crash and Eddie from raptors and is captured when Orson's raptors take over the watering hole, after which Crash and Eddie team up with Zee and Momma and the herd joins the fight. You can read more on buck ice age.

The dinosaurs are the franchise's biggest addition, and they first appear when baby Tyrannosaurs hatch from the eggs Sid brings home. Their enormous mother carries Sid off to a hidden jungle beneath the ice, where living dinosaurs wait. The same lost world returns in Buck Wild, where raptors chase Crash and Eddie, a Tyrannosaurus called Momma joins the fight, and the brothers use fire-breathing lizards to turn the raptors against their leader.

That leader is Orson, a small Protoceratops who was banished for his ambitions and returns to rule the land. In Collision Course, Gavin and his family of flying dinosaurs plan to escape the impact by leaving the rest of the world behind, until Buck persuades them to join the effort.

The dinosaurs drive some of the series' biggest set pieces, from the rescue of Sid at Lava Falls in Dawn of the Dinosaurs to the crystal-filled volcano in Collision Course.

The sea animals take over Continental Drift (2012), directed by Michael Thurmeier and Steve Martino. Captain Gutt, voiced by Peter Dinklage, is an ape who leads a band of pirates and is the series' villain on the water. Manny, Sid, Diego and Granny drift out to sea on a slab of ice, and the group frees enslaved hyraxes from the pirates before taking a ship of their own.

Granny's sea monster, Precious, helps drive off the pirates, and Gutt is eventually eaten by a siren. The hyraxes then begin rebuilding their home on a green island.

Earlier, The Meltdown has its own sea threat: two prehistoric sea reptiles thaw out and hunt the mammals as the flood water rises. Collision Course adds a different kind of newcomer, a character named Shangri Llama, voiced by Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

The smaller animals fill the herd's world, and the cast lists name more of them than most viewers catch. Ice Age (2002) credits dodos, rhinos, an aardvark and a group of Freaky Mammals. The Meltdown adds a Lone Gunslinger Vulture, voiced by Will Arnett, who warns the herd that the ice wall is really a dam, as well as a dung beetle, beavers, an elk and a condor chick.

Dawn of the Dinosaurs includes a gazelle, a pudgy beaver mom, an aardvark mom and a molehog, plus a Diatryma girl named Madison. Scrat, voiced by Chris Wedge, belongs to none of these groups. His acorn chase sets off the plot of several films, cracking the Earth open in Continental Drift and sending asteroids toward Earth in Collision Course. You can read more on scrat ice age.

In my opinion, the best-used species in the franchise are the ones that give the story a change of heart, and that is how I rank the five groups below. This is opinion, based on how much each species changes the plot rather than how funny it is.

1. Mammoth. Manny carries the saga's grief, fatherhood and acceptance. It could be argued that no other animal gets a full arc from Ice Age (2002) to Collision Course, and the herd of mammoths in The Meltdown is the franchise's most hopeful turn.
2. Saber-toothed cat. Diego's choice at the cliff edge is, for me, the best scene in the first film, and Shira gives the series a second cat with her own reasons.
3. Ground sloth. Sid is the comic engine, and his decision to raise three eggs as his own children starts Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
4. Possums. Crash and Eddie are funnier in small doses, and Buck Wild shows they can carry a film, although not always as smoothly as the leads.
5. Dinosaurs. The lost world gives the series its best set pieces, but the species themselves are mostly backdrop, which makes them the least developed group here.

If you are choosing a first film for a child, my pick is Ice Age (2002), rated PG in the US, because it keeps the cast small. The ice age movies in order page shows where to go next, and ice age movies ranked covers the films themselves.