I wanted to see this thing in motion, so I tried to search up the youtube video, but no dice. Every article on it is just copy-pasted from the original on the Express site, and I can’t get the embedded video attached to it to work. I did find an article on NIWA’s site about a species of sea pig, which looks similar.
Only adult one I can think of is Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams (cats). There’s a ton of these for kids, though; here’s a few I’ve read:
Edit: Sorry, I derped on the scifi/fantasy/action aspect of the request; the E.B. White books don’t fall into that category.