National Animals
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50 free National Animals trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every country likes to pick an animal to stand for it, and the choices say a lot. Some nations chose a fierce predator, some a humble farm animal, and a few went for creatures that never existed at all. Others still honour an animal that died out centuries ago. This quiz covers country animals from every continent: the famous ones on flags, coins and coats of arms, the weird national animals that surprise almost everyone, and the legends, votes and laws that made them official. You will meet mythical beasts, rare forest dwellers and a few birds that almost got the job. It suits geography fans, animal lovers, pub quiz teams and classrooms. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing which animal belongs to which country, and why it was chosen.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country chose the unicorn as its national animal and shows it wrapped in gold chains in heraldry?
Scotland
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.
Q 02Which bird did Benjamin Franklin call more respectable than the bald eagle in a 1784 letter to his daughter?
Turkey
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.
Q 03Which island nation, the only place the extinct dodo ever lived, shows the bird on its coat of arms?
Mauritius
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.
Q 04Which nation's flag shows its national symbol, a red dragon, walking across a green and white field?
Wales
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.
Q 05Which animal, once trapped across Canada for the fur trade, is a national symbol shown on the Canadian nickel?
Beaver
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.
Q 06Which flightless bird is such an icon of New Zealand that its name became a nickname for New Zealanders?
Kiwi
Kiwi have nostrils at the very tip of the long beak, so the bird can sniff out prey before it sees it.
Q 07Which country's national animal is the Komodo dragon, the largest living species of lizard?
Indonesia
Indonesia is the only place the Komodo dragon lives wild, on a handful of islands where males can reach 3 metres and 150 kg.
Q 08Which animal, often used as China's national symbol, was long handed to foreign zoos as a diplomatic gift?
Giant panda
Giant panda gifts stopped in 1984, and China has only leased the animals to foreign zoos since.
Q 09Which big cat, the focus of a 1973 Indian conservation project, is the national animal of India and Bangladesh?
Tiger
Tiger numbers in India had fallen to an estimated 1,827 by the early 1970s, the alarm that led to Project Tiger.
Q 10Which marsupial joins the emu in holding up the shield on Australia's coat of arms?
Kangaroo
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.
Q 11Which antelope is the national animal of South Africa and the nickname of its national rugby union team?
Springbok
Springbok rugby kept its name after apartheid because Nelson Mandela stepped in to save it for the sake of reconciliation.
Q 12Which country took the rooster as a national symbol thanks to a Latin pun on the name of its ancient people?
France
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.
Q 13Which country counts the bull as a national symbol, with huge black Osborne silhouettes standing beside its roads?
Spain
Spain's roadside bulls began in 1956 as brandy advertisements, and a 1994 order to remove them was dropped after a public outcry.
Q 21Which striped-legged forest animal, found wild only in the DR Congo, is a national symbol shown on its currency?
Okapi
Okapi look part zebra but are the giraffe's closest living relative, and science formally recognised the species only in 1901.
Q 22Which country officially recognised the betta, a popular aquarium fighting fish, as its national aquatic animal in 2019?
Thailand
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.
Q 23Which Himalayan country officially declared the cow to be its national animal in 2015?
Nepal
Nepal chose the cow even though the one-horned rhinoceros had also been proposed for the honour.
Q 14Which country's national coat of arms depicts a golden eagle on a cactus devouring a rattlesnake?
Mexico
Mexico took the scene from an Aztec legend about where to build Tenochtitlan, the city that became its capital.
Q 15Which bird, ridden by the Hindu war god Kartikeya in religious art, is the national bird of India?
Peacock
Peacock trains look far too long to lift, yet the bird is still capable of flight.
Q 16Which animal, said to have suckled Rome's founders Romulus and Remus, is Italy's unofficial national animal?
Wolf
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.
Q 17Which island country's official mascot is the Merlion, a creature with a lion's head and a fish's body?
Singapore
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.
Q 18Which animal was named the national mammal of the United States in 2016, joining the bald eagle?
American bison
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.
Q 19Which soaring scavenger is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador?
Andean condor
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.
Q 20Which long-tailed bird is the national animal of Guatemala and also the name of the Guatemalan currency?
Quetzal
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.
Q 24Which country's coat of arms shows the vicuña, its national animal and a wild relative of the alpaca?
Peru
Peru's Inca rulers valued vicuña wool so highly that nobody but royalty was allowed to wear it.
Q 25Which country treats the Chollima, a mythical winged horse too swift to be mounted, as a national symbol?
North Korea
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.
Q 26Which garden bird was voted Britain's national bird in a 2015 poll organised by birdwatcher David Lindo?
Robin
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.
Q 27Which West African country puts an elephant's head on its coat of arms and calls its football team the Elephants?
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast is named for the trade in tusks, and the forest elephant on its arms is the largest animal found there.
Q 28Which Central American country made its two-toed and three-toed sloths national symbols?
Costa Rica
Costa Rica gave both sloths the title to help conserve them and protect their habitat.
Q 29Which nearly blind mammal of the Ganges has India recognised as its national aquatic animal?
River dolphin
River dolphin eyes in the Ganges are tiny and lensless, so the animal finds its way through the murk by echolocation.
Q 30Which country's national animal is the markhor, a wild goat with long corkscrew horns?
Pakistan
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.