49 Fun Facts About State Animals

Which bird is the state bird of seven states, more than any other?

Northern cardinal. In spring, cardinals guard their territory so fiercely that they attack their own reflections in windows and car mirrors.

Which bird represents six states, including Kansas, Montana and Wyoming?

Western meadowlark. Audubon gave it the species name neglecta, Latin for overlooked, because explorers after Lewis and Clark had passed over so common a bird.

Which bird is the state bird of five states, including Texas and Tennessee?

Northern mockingbird. Its song made it so prized as a cage bird in the 1800s that trapping probably made it scarce along parts of the East Coast.

Which bird only became the official US national bird in December 2024?

Bald eagle. On the Great Seal since 1782, it nearly vanished from the lower 48 before the 1972 ban on DDT helped it recover.

Which animal is the national mammal of the United States?

American bison. Hunting cut herds of tens of millions to a few hundred animals by the late 1800s, and in 2016 Congress made the survivor the national mammal.

Which bird has been Hawaii's state bird since 1957?

Nene. Hunting and introduced predators left only about 30 of these Hawaiian geese in the wild by the 1950s, before decades of conservation work brought them back from the brink.

What is the state bird of New Mexico?

Greater roadrunner. It can fly but rarely bothers, sprinting at 15 miles per hour or more to run down lizards and snakes.

Which bird was adopted as Alaska's state bird in 1955?

Willow ptarmigan. It trades its brown summer plumage for snow white each winter to hide from predators, keeping only its black tail feathers.

Which bird on Louisiana's flag and seal is its official state bird?

Brown pelican. Pesticides wiped it out of the 'Pelican State' in the 1960s, so Louisiana rebuilt its flock with young birds brought in from Florida.

Which state bird is named after a colonial lord's heraldic colors?

Baltimore oriole. Maryland's state bird wears the black and orange of Lord Baltimore, the colony's proprietor, and the city's baseball team was later named after the bird.

Which bird is the state bird of both Idaho and Nevada?

Mountain bluebird. It can't dig its own nest hole, so it relies on old woodpecker cavities and, these days, on nest boxes that people put up.

Which bird is Oklahoma's state bird?

Scissor-tailed flycatcher. The male courts with a spectacular aerial display, climbing and diving sharply while his long forked tail opens and closes.

Which desert bird, the largest of its family in the United States, is Arizona's state bird?

Cactus wren. It nests among cactus spines that keep predators away, and it rarely drinks, getting nearly all its water from its food.

Which bird was named Minnesota's state bird in 1961?

Common loon. It also swims on Canada's one-dollar coin, which Canadians instantly nicknamed the loonie.

Which bird has been Colorado's state bird since 1931?

Lark bunting. The male stakes out his patch of prairie with a song flight, climbing fast and then singing all the way down as he glides back to earth.

What is the state bird of Vermont?

Hermit thrush. Walt Whitman gave its song a central part in 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', his elegy for Abraham Lincoln.

Which bird is Pennsylvania's official state game bird?

Ruffed grouse. The male advertises his territory by standing on a log and beating his wings so fast that the air itself makes a drumming sound.

Delaware's official bird, adopted in 1939, is which strain of gamecock?

Blue Hen Chicken. In the traditional account, Delaware soldiers in the Revolutionary War staged cockfights with these birds, then fought so fiercely themselves that they were likened to them.

What is the state bird of Georgia?

Brown thrasher. Atlanta's NHL team, which began play in 1999, was named the Thrashers in its honor, before the franchise moved in 2011 and became the Winnipeg Jets.

Which bird is the state bird of both Massachusetts and Maine?

Black-capped chickadee. Massachusetts names the species, but Maine's 1927 law says only that the state bird 'shall be the chickadee', without saying which kind.

Which bird was designated New Hampshire's state bird in 1957?

Purple finch. Despite the name, the male is not really purple: his head and breast are closer to raspberry red or old rose.

Which bird is the state bird of Missouri and New York?

Eastern bluebird. Its numbers fell sharply in the mid-1900s as nesting holes grew scarce, then climbed back once people lined roadsides with birdhouses built for it.

Which bird became California's state bird in 1931?

California quail. It lives in sociable flocks called coveys that strut about on the ground and burst into a short, explosive flight only when disturbed.

Which bird is the state bird of Connecticut, Michigan and Wisconsin?

American robin. Early settlers named it after Europe's robin redbreast because of its orange chest, though the two birds are not closely related.

Which bird did Washington schoolchildren pick as state bird in 1951?

American goldfinch. Lawmakers called the 1951 vote to break a tie: children had picked another bird in 1928, and a women's clubs' poll in 1931 had chosen the goldfinch.

Alabama's state bird, the yellowhammer, is which species?

Northern flicker. 'Yellowhammer' became a nickname for Alabama's Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, and later for the state itself.

Which member of the raccoon family is the state mammal of Arizona?

Ringtail. Miners and settlers kept it in their cabins as a mouser, which earned it the nickname miner's cat, though it is no cat at all.

Which animal did Florida's students elect as the official state animal in 1982?

Florida panther. The students chose the most endangered of all the state's symbols, a cat hunted to the edge of extinction, and Florida's NHL team later took its name.

Which animal is the official state small mammal of Texas?

Nine-banded armadillo. A single fertilized egg splits into four, so a mother almost always gives birth to identical quadruplets.

Which animal is an official state symbol of Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and several other states?

White-tailed deer. It is named for the white underside of its tail, which it raises and flashes as a warning when it senses danger.

Which animal is Colorado's state animal and Alberta's provincial mammal?

Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. Rival rams rear up and charge each other head-on, and the crack of their horns colliding can be heard a mile away.

Which animal is the official state mammal of both Oregon and New York?

North American beaver. Trapped almost out of existence when beaver-fur hats were in fashion, it gave Oregon its nickname and still appears on the back of the state flag.

Which horse breed is the state animal of Vermont and state horse of Massachusetts?

Morgan. Every Morgan traces back to one small bay stallion named Figure, who became known by the name of his owner, the schoolteacher Justin Morgan.

Which spotted breed became Idaho's state horse in 1975?

Appaloosa. The breed comes from the Nez Perce of the Northwest, renowned horse breeders who bred only from their best animals.

Which kind of seal is Hawaii's official state mammal?

Monk seal. Sealing expeditions in the 1800s nearly wiped out the Hawaiian kind, which lives nowhere else on Earth and is the last survivor of its genus.

Which animal is Wisconsin's state animal, a nickname first given to lead miners who sheltered in their own diggings?

Badger. The nickname goes back to Wisconsin's territorial days, yet the animal itself was not made the official state animal until 1957.

What is the state animal of Montana?

Grizzly bear. The 1983 law says the animal was 'preferred by a vote of Montana schoolchildren', who had chosen it over the runner-up, the elk.

Which reptile represents Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi?

American alligator. Hunted almost to extinction, it was declared endangered and then recovered so strongly that it came off the list in 1987.

Which reptile did Vermont adopt in 1994 at the suggestion of schoolchildren?

Painted turtle. Michigan followed a year later, after fifth-graders in Niles discovered that their state had no official reptile.

Which reptile is the official state reptile of California and Nevada?

Desert tortoise. It beats the desert by avoiding it, spending about 95 percent of its life in burrows that shield it from the heat and the cold.

Which lizard became Utah's official state reptile in 2019?

Gila monster. A compound found in its venom led scientists to exenatide, a diabetes drug and a forerunner of today's GLP-1 medicines.

Which giant salamander became Pennsylvania's state amphibian in 2019?

Eastern hellbender. It has lungs but barely uses them: it takes in most of its oxygen through the loose, wrinkled folds of skin along its sides.

Which reptile is Georgia's official state reptile?

Gopher tortoise. Its deep burrows give shelter to dozens of other animal species, which makes it a keystone of its habitat; Florida named it its state tortoise in 2008.

Which sea turtle is South Carolina's official state reptile?

Loggerhead. Its massive head carries jaws strong enough to crush hard-shelled prey such as whelks and conchs.

Which reptile represents both North Carolina and Tennessee?

Eastern box turtle. A hinge across its lower shell lets it pull in its head and legs and clamp shut completely, like a closed box.

Which amphibian represents Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma?

American bullfrog. An ambush hunter, it will swallow almost any animal it can overpower, including snakes, small birds and other frogs.

Which fish is the official state fish of Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska?

Channel catfish. Taste buds cover its whole body and crowd its whiskers, letting it track down food in dark, muddy water.

Which fish did the Minnesota legislature declare the official state fish in 1965?

Walleye. A reflective layer behind its eyes lets it see in dim water, so it keeps to the dark depths by day and moves into the shallows at night.

Which salmon, called king salmon by Alaskans, is the state fish of Alaska and Oregon?

Chinook. The largest Pacific salmon, it stops feeding once it enters fresh water, yet some swim well over a thousand miles upriver to the stream where they hatched.