The Rarest Villagers in 'Animal Crossing' by Species and Personality

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players start out with a couple residents on their island other than themselves and, of course, our tanuki overlord Tom Nook and his two sons, Timmy and Tommy. As you progress in the game, you'll encounter museum proprietor Blathers, an owl, hedgehog seamstresses Mabel and Sable Able, and occasional visitors such as Blathers' stargazing sister Celeste, Sahara the rug merchant, and a host of others.

You'll also get new villagers moving into your island community as you develop and expand. While the residents are randomly selected from a roster of in-game characters, some species of villager are less common than others. Here are the rare villagers in Animal Crossing by species.

There are at least 383 villagers who could potentially end up moving to your little island, and they span the animal kingdom to include mammals, reptiles, fish, and birds. There are several members of each animal species, but the octopus seems to be the least common with three known tentacled characters: Marina, Octavian, and Zucker.

What makes things awkward for our eight-armed villagers is that you can catch an octopus while fishing — or at least you could in past versions of the game, though it remains to be seen if they will be catchable in New Horizons. In previous generations of the game, there was one other species that could be a catchable critter and a villager: the frog. So far in New Horizons there have not been any mature frogs in ponds, but you can catch a tadpole, aka a baby frog.

There are four known cows and six known bulls, as well as six rhinos who might come to live with you. Other scarce species include alligators, anteaters, hippos, lions and tigers, which have seven characters each that have been catalogued.

By far the most common animals in the game are cats, rabbits, squirrels, and dogs. No matter what species your villagers belong to, they will also have one of eight personality types assigned to in-game characters. So despite the fact that there are a lot of different names and appearances, you'll probably notice a lot of villagers on your friends' islands are like a brother from another mother to one of your residents. 

The personality types are gendered, and typically your first two residents will be male and female. The personality types are as follows:

• Male: Jock, Lazy, Smug, Cranky
• Female: Uchi, Peppy, Snooty, Normal

Of course, these are pretty broad personality types and within them, villagers will have different hobbies and interests that differentiate them from others. If you're wondering what in the heck "uchi" means, it's a Japanese word that means home but when it's used to describe a personality, the best English word that compares would be "cliqueish."

In Animal Crossing, it's meant as "sisterly," and while it's a starter character personality type, it's also the rarest personality type, so you may run into a doppelgänger of your villager on your friends' islands!

You start off with a jock and an uchi character living with you, and over time you'll probably find your uchi villager has a tendency to be a little rude or blunt. The jock tends to be really into his workouts but can very very sweet and good-natured. 

The three octopus characters, Marina, Octavian, and Zucker, have normal, cranky, and lazy personality types. 

Anyway, though we can't say for certain which villagers are the rarest in the game, it's a safe bet if you have an octopus walking around your island it's about as rare as it would be to see an octopus wandering around on dry land in the real world!