50 Fun Facts About National Animals

Which country chose the unicorn as its national animal and shows it wrapped in gold chains in heraldry?

Scotland picked a beast that folklore casts as the sworn enemy of the lion, the national animal of England. The gold chains are a long-standing heraldic tradition.

Which bird did Benjamin Franklin call more respectable than the bald eagle in a 1784 letter to his daughter?

Turkey praise stayed in that private letter: Franklin never publicly suggested the bird as a national symbol. He did write that the bald eagle had a bad moral character.

Which island nation, the only place the extinct dodo ever lived, shows the bird on its coat of arms?

Mauritius lost the dodo fast: Dutch sailors first recorded it in 1598 and the last accepted sighting came in 1662. It still appears as a watermark on the country's banknotes.

Which nation's flag shows its national symbol, a red dragon, walking across a green and white field?

Wales gets the flag's green and white from the Tudors: Henry VII carried a red dragon standard at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Which animal, once trapped across Canada for the fur trade, is a national symbol shown on the Canadian nickel?

Beaver numbers once ran to an estimated 100–200 million before the fur trade; protection has since brought them back to some 10–15 million.

Which flightless bird is such an icon of New Zealand that its name became a nickname for New Zealanders?

Kiwi have nostrils at the very tip of the long beak, so the bird can sniff out prey before it sees it.

Which country's national animal is the Komodo dragon, the largest living species of lizard?

Indonesia is the only place the Komodo dragon lives wild, on a handful of islands where males can reach 3 metres and 150 kg.

Which animal, often used as China's national symbol, was long handed to foreign zoos as a diplomatic gift?

Giant panda gifts stopped in 1984, and China has only leased the animals to foreign zoos since.

Which big cat, the focus of a 1973 Indian conservation project, is the national animal of India and Bangladesh?

Tiger numbers in India had fallen to an estimated 1,827 by the early 1970s, the alarm that led to Project Tiger.

Which marsupial joins the emu in holding up the shield on Australia's coat of arms?

Kangaroo and emu were said to suit a nation moving forward, because neither animal can easily walk backwards. Neither has ever been made an official national animal emblem.

Which antelope is the national animal of South Africa and the nickname of its national rugby union team?

Springbok rugby kept its name after apartheid because Nelson Mandela stepped in to save it for the sake of reconciliation.

Which country took the rooster as a national symbol thanks to a Latin pun on the name of its ancient people?

France got the rooster from a pun: in Latin, gallus meant a rooster and Gallus an inhabitant of Gaul. Its enemies made the joke first, and its monarchs then embraced the bird.

Which country counts the bull as a national symbol, with huge black Osborne silhouettes standing beside its roads?

Spain's roadside bulls began in 1956 as brandy advertisements, and a 1994 order to remove them was dropped after a public outcry.

Which country's national coat of arms depicts a golden eagle on a cactus devouring a rattlesnake?

Mexico took the scene from an Aztec legend about where to build Tenochtitlan, the city that became its capital.

Which bird, ridden by the Hindu war god Kartikeya in religious art, is the national bird of India?

Peacock trains look far too long to lift, yet the bird is still capable of flight.

Which animal, said to have suckled Rome's founders Romulus and Remus, is Italy's unofficial national animal?

Wolf numbers in Italy fell to as few as 70–100 in the 1970s before strict protection; by 2022 the count had passed 3,000.

Which island country's official mascot is the Merlion, a creature with a lion's head and a fish's body?

Singapore's Merlion began in 1964 as a tourism board logo: the fish body recalls a fishing village, and the lion head the old name Singapura, or lion city.

Which animal was named the national mammal of the United States in 2016, joining the bald eagle?

American bison were cut from an estimated 60 million to just 541 animals by 1889, before a handful of ranchers gathered the last herds to save them.

Which soaring scavenger is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador?

Andean condor wings span up to 3.3 metres and have the largest surface area of any living bird, and some individuals live past 70.

Which long-tailed bird is the national animal of Guatemala and also the name of the Guatemalan currency?

Quetzal tail feathers were so precious to the ancient Maya that they served as a medium of exchange, which is how the money got its name.

Which striped-legged forest animal, found wild only in the DR Congo, is a national symbol shown on its currency?

Okapi look part zebra but are the giraffe's closest living relative, and science formally recognised the species only in 1901.

Which country officially recognised the betta, a popular aquarium fighting fish, as its national aquatic animal in 2019?

Thailand is the primary breeder and exporter of the fish, known there as pla kat and to much of the world as the Siamese fighting fish.

Which Himalayan country officially declared the cow to be its national animal in 2015?

Nepal chose the cow even though the one-horned rhinoceros had also been proposed for the honour.

Which country's coat of arms shows the vicuña, its national animal and a wild relative of the alpaca?

Peru's Inca rulers valued vicuña wool so highly that nobody but royalty was allowed to wear it.

Which country treats the Chollima, a mythical winged horse too swift to be mounted, as a national symbol?

North Korea named its Chollima Movement, a drive for fast economic development, after the horse, which is said to cover a thousand li in a single day.

Which garden bird was voted Britain's national bird in a 2015 poll organised by birdwatcher David Lindo?

Robin took 34% of the final vote, repeating a win from the 1960s in a ballot publicised by The Times. Neither vote made the title official.

Which West African country puts an elephant's head on its coat of arms and calls its football team the Elephants?

Ivory Coast is named for the trade in tusks, and the forest elephant on its arms is the largest animal found there.

Which Central American country made its two-toed and three-toed sloths national symbols?

Costa Rica gave both sloths the title to help conserve them and protect their habitat.

Which nearly blind mammal of the Ganges has India recognised as its national aquatic animal?

River dolphin eyes in the Ganges are tiny and lensless, so the animal finds its way through the murk by echolocation.

Which country's national animal is the markhor, a wild goat with long corkscrew horns?

Pakistan's markhor has a name thought to come from the Persian for snake eater, and a male's horns can grow to 160 cm.

Which stocky goat-antelope of the eastern Himalayas is the national animal of Bhutan?

Takin have a nose so swollen-looking that biologist George Schaller likened the animal to a bee-stung moose.

Which country named its former currency, the kuna, after the marten, a national symbol shown on its euro coins?

Croatia's kuna looked back to the Middle Ages, when highly valued marten skins served as tax and currency in the region.

Which Nordic country has had the whooper swan as its national bird since 1981?

Finland also stamps the whooper swan on its 1 euro coin, so the national bird turns up in pockets across the eurozone.

Which country's national bird is the green pheasant, a species native nowhere else?

Japan's ornithological society chose the bird in 1947, partly because a hen walking with her chicks was seen as a symbol of family harmony.

Which desert antelope, shown on the tailfins of Qatar Airways planes, is the national animal of Qatar?

Arabian oryx were extinct in the wild by the early 1970s, survived in zoos and private reserves, and went back into the desert from 1980.

Which East African country has the Masai giraffe as its national animal?

Tanzania's Masai giraffe is the largest-bodied giraffe species, which makes it the tallest land animal on Earth.

Which southern African country features a pair of zebras on its national coat of arms?

Botswana's zebras hold an ear of sorghum and an elephant's tusk, the tusk standing for the country's elephant population.

Which Saharan country's national animal is the fennec fox, known for its unusually large ears?

Algeria's fennec uses those oversized ears to shed heat and to listen for prey moving underground.

Which farm animal, known locally as the carabao, is widely considered the national animal of the Philippines?

Water buffalo stand for hard work in the Philippines, yet the country's culture commission says no law has ever made the title official.

Which national bird of Uganda stands in a white disc at the centre of the Ugandan flag?

Crowned crane images also sat on Uganda's colonial badge, and the Baganda people see the bird as a sign of good fortune, longevity and wealth.

What is shown in silhouette on Papua New Guinea's flag, having become the country's national emblem in 1971?

Bird-of-paradise is kumul in Tok Pisin, which is why the national rugby league team plays as the Kumuls.

Which crested bird was chosen as Israel's national bird in a 2008 survey of 155,000 citizens?

Hoopoe beat the white-spectacled bulbul in the vote, which marked the country's 60th anniversary.

Which animal stands inside an olive wreath at the centre of Eritrea's national emblem?

Camel trains carried supplies during Eritrea's war of independence from Ethiopia, and nationalists saw the animal as instrumental to winning it.

Which Caribbean country's national bird is the doctor bird, a hummingbird with long tail streamers?

Jamaica is the only place the doctor bird lives, and a male's streamers make up about half of his 22–25 cm length.

Which Central American country's national bird is the harpy eagle, shown on its coat of arms?

Panama's harpy eagle is the largest bird of prey across its range, and a female's talons average more than 12 cm long.

Which Central American country's national animal is Baird's tapir, known there as the mountain cow?

Belize's tapir is the largest native land mammal in both Central and South America.

Which Caribbean country's national bird is the tocororo, a trogon whose plumage matches the colours of its flag?

Cuba is the only place the tocororo lives, and both sexes wear the same flag-coloured plumage.

Which Caribbean country's flag, adopted in 1978, features its national bird, the sisserou parrot?

Dominica's parrot makes its flag one of the few flags of sovereign states to contain purple.

Which leaf-eating bird, known locally as the Canje pheasant, is the national bird of Guyana?

Hoatzin chicks hatch with two claws on each wing, and the adults ferment leaves in the gut much as a cow does.

Which Mediterranean country's national animal is the mouflon, a wild sheep shown on its smallest euro coins?

Cyprus nearly lost its mouflon in the early 1950s; today the national rugby union players are nicknamed the Wild Mouflons.