Facts · Trivia · Field Notes

The animal behind the symbol.

Before an animal meant anything, it was an animal. Here is what each one actually does — the biology the symbolism grew out of.

43 of 43 animals

Alligator & Crocodile

Alligators dig their own water-holding pits, called "gator holes," using their tails — a trick that also helps fish, turtles, and birds survive droug…

A little brown bat eats roughly 4 to 8 grams of insects a night, which puts a real dent in local insect populations.

Bears pack surprising extremes into one body: they can hibernate for around seven months without eating, sprint up to 40 mph, and some can swim as fa…

Beavers slap their broad, foot-long tails against the water to warn the colony of danger, then can stay submerged for up to 15 minutes at a stretch.

Bees see with five eyes but can't perceive the color red, and a single hive of 30,000 to 60,000 workers can produce more than 100 pounds of surplus h…

Butterflies taste with sensors in their feet, can't fly once their body temperature drops below 86°F, and monarchs migrate up to 2,500 miles in a sin…

Cats cannot taste sweetness at all — the gene for the sweet receptor is broken in the entire cat family.

Chicks only three or four days old can add and subtract objects hidden behind screens, and they lay numbers out in space small-to-left, large-to-righ…

Cows are ruminants with a four-chambered stomach, which lets them chew their cud after putting away roughly 40 pounds of grass and grain a day.

The coyote is a remarkably adaptable member of the dog family.

Crabs are decapod crustaceans with ten limbs, compound eyes on stalks, and — oddly enough — teeth located in their stomach rather than their mouth.

Crickets are nocturnal insects that hear through organs on their front legs instead of their heads.

Crows are intelligent songbirds.

Only bucks grow antlers, and they shed the old set to grow a new pair every year.

A dog's nose can detect scents at concentrations roughly 100 million times fainter than a human can notice, and its hearing is about four times sharp…

Dolphins navigate and hunt using echolocation, a biological sonar so precise that decades of research show it outperforming many human-made sonar sys…

Dragonflies are ancient aerial predators whose lineage stretches back roughly 300 million years, and today more than 5,000 species patrol skies world…

Eagles are powerful raptors: more than 60 species spread across nearly every continent, hunting everything from fish to young deer with hooked beaks…

Elephants are the largest land mammals on Earth: the biggest individual ever recorded weighed roughly 24,000 pounds, and their trunks contain an esti…

Foxes act more like cats than dogs in several ways: grey foxes can retract their claws and climb trees, a trick no other canine can manage, and leg w…

Frogs breathe partly through their moist skin, live on every continent except Antarctica, and can jump several times their own body length thanks to…

As the tallest mammal on Earth, a giraffe still can't comfortably reach the ground to drink because of that towering neck, and its tongue stretches a…

Goats were among the first animals ever domesticated, tamed roughly 9,000 years ago, and today more people worldwide eat goat meat and drink goat mil…

Hawks are secretive hunters built for precision, known especially for extraordinarily sharp eyesight and a hooked beak made for tearing prey.

Horses need surprisingly little sleep for an animal their size — just 2.5 to 3 hours a day — and they can gallop at roughly 27 miles per hour.

Jellyfish are about 95% water and have no bones, brain, heart or blood, yet the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea sleeps, dropping from about 58 bell p…

Lions are the only big cats that live in tight-knit social groups called prides, and they spend 16 to 20 hours a day resting between hunts.

Monkeys are social, chatty primates, with 264 known species spread across forests, mountains, and grasslands worldwide.

Otters have the densest fur of any mammal on Earth — about a million hairs per square inch — and some species can dive over 300 feet chasing prey.

There are roughly 205 owl species worldwide, and nearly all of them hunt at night.

"Panther" isn't a single species.

An emperor penguin has stayed underwater for 32.2 minutes, the longest dive recorded for any bird.

More than half of the world's rabbits live in North America, and while they typically live around 10 years, pet rabbits tend to outlive their wild co…

A rooster is an adult male chicken, and it comes with a few surprises: its sense of smell and taste is weak, but its hearing is remarkably sharp, and…

Scorpions have no bones at all — their bodies are held together by a hard chitin exoskeleton, the same material found in insect shells.

Seahorses are among the ocean's oddest fish: some pygmy species stay under an inch long as adults, and as a group they're the slowest swimmers of any…

Sharks are ocean predators found worldwide — more than 400 species swim the seas, and a single jaw holds 5 to 15 rows of backup teeth that fall out r…

Snakes have no eyelids and never blink, and their famous flicking tongue is a scent-collecting tool, not a taste organ.

Squirrels make up a family of over 200 species that range from the tiny African pygmy squirrel, at just 5 inches long, to the Indian giant squirrel,…

Tigers are the largest wild cats on Earth, with bodies stretching up to 9.2 feet plus a 2-3 foot tail, yet only 3,000 to 4,500 remain in the wild tod…

Turtles have no vocal cords and no external ears, yet they communicate by gulping or expelling air and can pick up low-pitched vibrations around them.

Wolves are the largest wild canine species and live, travel, and hunt together in social packs.

A zebra's skin is uniformly dark — the white bands are where pigment is switched off — so black with white stripes is the closer description.