Q:

Intent message passing confusion

I am a little confused with intent and message passing in android.Basically my current predicament:
A screen is shown to user displaying list of animals, when a user clicks a row, e.g. a Tiger, information about this animal will be displayed on the next screen/activity.
I have the framework for the application largely taken care of, so when a user selects from animal list they are brought to the Animal activity/class, but at this stage it is just a generic mockup. 
How can I go about telling the application that TIGER was selected, and to show tiger data to user.My approach thus far
User clicks item on list and activity is called:
protected void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, int position, long id){
    Intent animalIntent = new Intent(this, Animal.class);
    startActivity(animalIntent);
}

A:

To expand upon @PhilLello, once you use Intent.setExtra(), you can retrieve the value in your activity with:
string animal;
Bundle extras = this.getIntent().getExtras();
if (extras != null) {
    animal = extras.getString("animal");
}

