Answers:

Large rodent native to Central and South America (6)

AGOUTI

Wading hen sacred to the Ancient Egyptians (4)

IBIS

Shrek, Shaun or Dolly? (5)

SHEEP

Feathers McGraw, Chilly Willy or Pingu? (7)

PENGUIN

Captain Nemo’s submarine in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (8)

NAUTILUS

Shakespeare play, The Taming of the _____ (5)

SHREW

Favourite meals of Obelix within the Asterix comedian books (4,4)

WILD BOAR

Sole member of the Icosteidae household, named for the floppiness of its physique (7)

RAGFISH

Maximus, Boxer or Sleipnir? (5)

HORSE

Horton, Babar or Dumbo? (8)

ELEPHANT

Kept as a pet by Buzz McCallister in 1990’s Home Alone (9)

TARANTULA

Adam ___, actual title of singer Stuart Leslie Goddard (3)

ANT

Chinese Zodiac signal (5)

TIGER

Chinese Zodiac signal (3)

RAT

Turtle of the Emydidae household, normally present in contemporary or brackish water (8)

TERRAPIN

Small hen of the Sitta genus, usually with gray/blue upperparts and a black eye stripe (8)

NUTHATCH

Captain Archibald _______, common character in The Adventures of Tintin comedian books (7)

HADDOCK

Eucalyptus-loving marsupial native to Australia (5)

KOALA

Cleopatra’s technique of suicide? (3)

ASP

The Pink _______, 1963 Peter Sellers film (7)

PANTHER

Large, horned mammal – considered one of Africa’s ‘Big Five’ (10)

RHINOCEROS

The ________ King, 2002 Dwayne Johnson film (8)

SCORPION

____ Scamander, protagonist of the ‘Fantastic Beasts…’ film sequence (4)

NEWT

Bird within the genus Baeolophus – undoubtedly not a rodent! (8)

TITMOUSE

Pincered insect whose title is used colloquially as a synonym for ‘eavesdrop’ (6)

EARWIG

Terk, Magilla or Donkey Kong? (7)

GORILLA

Classic folks music lyric: “Home, house on the vary, the place the deer and the ________ play” (8)

ANTELOPE

Flightless hen featured on the coat-of-arms of Australia (3)

EMU

Latin title for the hoopoe (5)

UPUPA

Fungus-farming weevil of the Platypodinae subfamily, with a tasty-sounding title? (8,6)

AMBROSIA BEETLE

_________ Jim, online game invertebrate (9)

EARTHWORM

The ________ Coast, 1986 Harrison Ford film (8)

MOSQUITO

_______’s Garden, Beatles music on their 1969 album Abbey Road (7)

OCTOPUS

Species of ‘Moby Dick’ within the 1851 novel by Herman Melville (5,5)

SPERM WHALE

Alternative title for the ocean eagle, hen of prey within the genus Haliaeetus (4)

ERNE

Wading hen carefully associated to the heron (5)

EGRET

Jungle- and forest dwelling herbivorous mammal with a brief, prehensile nostril trunk (5)

TAPIR

That’s So _____, first Disney Channel sequence to succeed in 100 episodes (5)

RAVEN

Elongated, tubular organism current in nice numbers in topsoil and water sources (8)

NEMATODE

Species of ‘Knuckles’ in Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog online game sequence (7)

ECHIDNA

Grid:

Strategy:

I do not actually have an awesome reply to this. I began with the smaller ones (asp, ibis, rat), in addition to placing the beginning letters in every field. Then I attempted to fill in blanks as I solved them.

Hidden Animal:

Shading by the phrases and choosing out the overlapped letters yields: RAISETHESEUP.

Credit to @Arturo (reply right here). ‘Raise’ is supposed to boost the overlapped sections – as if popping out of 1’s monitor. Doing this and grouping them into 5×3 sections yields the Braille spelling of SNAKE, the hidden animal. SNAKE is sensible due to the slithery method the crossword is stuffed.