The Tree of Life is the center icon of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It’s fourteen stories tall and 325 animals are carved into its trunk and branches. You can spend an entire day just admiring the thing, walking around its base and trying to find them all.

Lisa and I made our way through the gardens at the base of the tree for the first time. Here are the photos I took of the incredible sculptures. I doubt I found even close to a quarter of them.

Probably my favorite of the entire lot. It stood in front of this for a good five minutes before realizing that it was there. Even when I first opened the photo to label it, it took a few seconds to materialize out of the tree.

There’s more after the jump, and If you’re at all interested, be sure to check out my Tree of Life set over on Flickr, where I’ve labeled the animals in the more crowded and distant pictures. It’s worth it if only for the Magic Eye effect. You’ll better appreciate the care they put into blending the sculptures into the natural elements of the tree.

Toucan

Rhinoceros, Bird

Tortoise

Buffalo

(There’s also a Ram and a Crustacean of some sort in the upper left)

Lizard

Pirahna

Scary Fish

Crocodile

Birds

Vole, maybe?

Kangaroo, Mouse

That’s it for the shots I got at the base of the tree while walking through the Discovery Island Gardens. These animals are carved into the roots that line the walkway and are close enough to touch for the most part. They only make up a small fraction of the animals found on the tree: the rest are located at parts of the base that aren’t in the Discovery Island gardens but the vast majority of them are found on the trunk and branches of the tree itself.

The trunk has an insane amount of animals on it but they’re so well-blended with the tree itself and hidden amongst each other that it’s nearly impossible to see them all with one viewing. Even as I scanned through the photographs I took, I discovered more than I did when taking the photo, and different angles allowed me to find more and more. What I previously thought was just a head of an animal suddenly was revealed to be only part of the entire body, clearly visible in previous pictures once the right viewing angle uncovered it.

The following pictures are of the tree itself. The size limitations on the blog prevent me from sharing them with any great detail so I really encourage you to check out the Tree of Life set on Flickr where you can view the individual pictures both in a larger format AND with as many animals as I discovered labeled using its notes feature.

You can see the Eagle clearly,

but what about the Baboon? Spider? Camel? Lion? Seahorse? Alligator?

Here’s a closer look at the Baboon and the Alligator. You can see the horse from later photos peeking out at the bottom.

There’s a whole lot going on here. You can make out the crustacean and the Ram pretty easily, but there’s far more.

There’s at least 9 animals visible in this picture. Swear. Go check Flickr.

The Rhinoceros is pretty apparent, but what about the other 12?

You obviously can see a Walrus, but what about the frog?

There’s at least 11 others.

Alright, that’s it for the blog. The rest that were either too detailed and distant or too dark or repeats from other angles can all be found on the Tree of Life Flickr set. Play Highlights with me.