Efficient date range search?

Imagine that I have a lot of entries of the form (sorry if the SQL is messed up):

CREATE TABLE "pets" (

        name VARCHAR(20);


        "born" timestamp;


        "died" timestamp;


);

and I have a LOT of pets (let's say millions) and some don't live too long (mice, fruitflies, whatever), and some do (parrots, elephants).

I would like to make a query to say

on july 4 of last year, what pets were alive?

and I would like to make this query right to the minute