Using the Tree of life database [tol] (http://tolweb.org/tree/) or the much larger Open Tree of life databse [ott] (https://tree.opentreeoflife.org/) this short python code helps to visualize and look up different species from the terminal as well as explore the database by selecting different groups.
python species.py
To use the larger database 4.5 million species (takes 5 seconds to load in memory) first create a directory called ott then download the taxonomy.tsv from the database and put it inside the folder. Then it can be used as follows
python species.py --database ott
