Animal Motifs / Real Life

• Toyotomi Hideyoshi's nickname was "Monkey" (Saru), allegedly given by Oda Nobunaga because of his facial resemblance to a monkey. This recognition directly contributed to the popular image of Toyotomi Hideyoshi being a monkey-styled person, both in appearance and mode of behaviour.
• Most countries have an animal they use as a symbol for the nation as a whole:
  • The United States has the bald eagle; prior to independence, the rattlesnake was a popular symbol of the American colonies, as seen in the Gadsden flag, the original American Navy Jack, and Benjamin Franklin's famous "Join, or Die" political cartoon. Each state tends to have its own state animal or, usually, several state animals, since state legislators' idea of fun is picking official state this and official state that.^note This does get kind of ridiculous; one state (Oklahoma) has a state meal, in five courses with a generous helping of side dishes. On the other hand, sometimes these fairly harmless bills become school projects to show schoolchildren how a bill becomes a law... and legislators sorely disappoint. Every state has a state bird and at least one state mammal. A few highlights:
    • California famously has a big ol' bear on its flag, and unsurprisingly its official animal (well, official land mammal) is that bear. The bear is a California grizzly, an extinct subspecies. Since the California grizzly had a distinct golden cast to its fur, this is why the UC Berkeley athletic teams are called the Golden Bears.
    • Wisconsin has long been called the "Badger State," and it came as no surprise that the badger was officially chosen as a symbol of Wisconsin in 1957. The University of Wisconsin Badgers had had that nickname long before then.
    • Peculiarly, Michigan's two state animals are the American Robin (state bird) and White-tailed Deer (state mammal). However, it has long been known as the "Wolverine State." This is in large part because (1) "Wolverine" was an Appropriated Appellation, as during the "Toledo War" the Ohioans called the Michiganders "Wolverines" for their scrappy ferocity, and (2) the wolverine is very rare in Michigan: the state is near the southern limit of the boreal animal's range.
    • Kentucky's state horse is the Thoroughbred, which is no surprise; Kentucky is the home of American horse breeding, to the point that there are special prizes for horses not from Kentucky. The state bird is the Cardinal, and the University of Louisville has festooned themselves with pictures of the bird.
    • Florida has three major icons in the American Alligator (state reptile), Florida Manatee (state marine animal), and Florida Panther (State animal). While the Panther did become the state animal, the Alligator tends to be more commonly used in imagery on account of higher population, association with swamps, and use in Florida sports teams.
  • Russia has the bear.
    • Chechnya has the wolf. Chechens are often symbolically compared to wolves too.
  • The United Kingdom:
    • The UK has either the scrappy but lovable bulldog or the more "official" regal lion. Sometimes the lion is associated with the UK while the bulldog is associated specifically with England, or the other way 'round, or the lion is associated with the monarchy and the bulldog with the people.
    • England also identifies strongly with the robin, as British robins were never hunted for food and consequently became the friendliest robins in the world. To this day, harming a robin is as repulsive to most Brits as a grievous felony, given their strong symbolism as representing the gentle English countryside. It just isn't done.
    • Scotland's national animal is more or less undisputed; it's the unicorn. The phrase "the Lion and the Unicorn" is a symbol of the union of England and Scotland, and also of the British monarchy.
    • Wales, not to be outdone in the fantastic-creature department, has the red dragon. This is a reference to Arthurian Legend (King Arthur being a hero of ancient Wales) in which Merlin made a prophecy about a red dragon and a white dragon.
    • Middlesbrough has a horse and lion motif. Horses are used to represent the town's mining history, however, the lion has more common and prominent imagery with sports and heraldry.
    • Manchester has the worker bee. The bee is a hardworking and productive creature which is why Manchester adopted it as their motif. The HMS Manchester was nicknamed Busy Bee and there is countless bee imagery in Manchester.
  • India has the tiger, primarily, but the national emblem features a lion (it's the "Lion Capital" of Asoka at Sarnath) and elephants (which appear on the frieze along the base of the "Lion Capital") are a common secondary symbol.
  • Thailand has the elephant, and specifically the white elephant, which is considered holy in Thai culture.
  • Modern Israel's national symbol is the Lion of Judah. Historically, or at least Biblically, each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel had its own animal symbol, but due to the loss of the Ten Tribes^note Reuben, Simeon, Naftali, Issachar, Asher, Dan, Zebulun, Gad, Ephraim, and Menasheh, most modern Jews descend from the tribe of Judah. Hence the term "Judah-ism", or Judaism. Also, the hoopoe is modern Israel's national bird, as despite being called "detestable" and not kosher in the Bible, it is a very common bird in Israel.^note Oddly, though, a religion with a positive view of the hoopoe is Islam, which holds that the hoopoe had saved the Hebrews from a disaster after crossing the Red Sea and that the bird had served as a sort of intelligence collector for King Solomon, and had delivered the news that the Queen of Sheba was planning a visit. Israel also has a national dog, the Canaan Dog - a spitz type herding dog that is very protective of its herds and its humans.
  • Italy inherited the wolf from Ancient Rome (Italy would actually have both wolf and eagle, but the heavy use of eagle symbolism by Fascism caused most Italians to 'forget' the eagle).
    • As said above, Ancient Rome had the wolf and the eagle. The eagle came from Jupiter, as Jupiter was their chief god and the eagle was his sacred animal. As for the wolf... It was a warning: they knew just how ferocious the beast is, and saw themselves as just as bad when at war. Which may be fitting with Italians usually remembering only the wolf as their animal, what with them inventing aereal bombing when it was considered a war crime and their army still having flamethrowers in its arsenal...
  • Like Italy, Turkey has the wolf. It represents Asena, an old deity of the pre-Islamic Turkish tribes. At some point in the past, there were plans to put the wolf symbol in official heraldry like the coat of arms, but it never took off. These days, the wolf symbol is most commonly associated with nationalists who have a tendency to Sigil Spam it all over the place.
  • China has its whiskered dragon. The panda is an alternative symbol when one wishes to portray China as friendly or harmless.
  • Canada has the mighty beaver. A few other animals occasionally feature (moose, caribou, Canada geese, and bears—both polar and grizzly—being the most common other choices), but the beaver is most prominent.
  • Germany has had the eagle (Adler) in some form or other for centuries. Within Germany, Berlin is associated with bears on account of a pun (Bär, which is German for "bear", sounds like the "Ber" in "Berlin"), and as Hanover historically used the symbol of a white horse, modern Lower Saxony does the same.
  • Spain has the black bull. This is a rather recent development, from a set of countryside ads for sherry (!) - there's more information on the other wiki.
  • France is unofficially associated with the Gallic rooster.
  • Empires with great reach or which were viewed as secular and religious authorities often adopt the double-headed eagle: the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the old Russian Empire, the Imperium of Man, etc.
  • Australia's Coat of Arms features a Kangaroo and an Emu, two fearsome, Australia-only animals that can't walk/jump/run backwards. Seriously. That's why they picked them.
    • A lot of the original generation that were from England wanted to choose a more fearsome creature like the lion, but the majority won out with the Kangaroo and Emu because it symbolized a nation that will move forward and never backwards. Also, these animals are more dangerous than they look.
    • These two animals are popular barbecue options that can be purchased at supermarkets & butcher shops. Yes, friends. Australia may be the only country in the world that regularly devours BOTH its national symbols. ^note Of course, they do still eat chicken in France, but the rooster is only an unofficial symbol. Others that are willing (even if it's not frequently on the menu) include every country that has a variety of deer as a symbolic animal (including Norway), Spain (who uses the bull), and several countries that have the camel as their symbol (at least among those for whom it isn't a taboo to eat them)
  • New Zealand has a wealth of distinctive native fauna that could be used to represent it (and sheep...), but by far the most popular (and most official) is the kiwi. It is popular enough that most New Zealanders will refer to themselves as Kiwis when talking about their nationality, and a term known as "Kiwiana" has appeared and refers to anything that New Zealand culturally associates with itself.
    • On an ironic note, the FLIGHTLESS kiwi is also the official symbol of their air force.
  • Chile has two animals, the mighty Andean Condor (The largest flying bird, even the most popular Chilean comic is starring an anthropomorphic condor) and the graceful Huemul (A type of deer).
    • At the end of the decade of the 90s, because of its remarkable economic growth, Chile was nicknamed "the jaguar of Latin America", comparing it with the "four tigers of Asia". After two economic crises and multiple cases of corruption, the nickname of "jaguars" is for many Chileans a kind of Old Shame (ironically the jaguar does not live in Chile, a more appropriate animal would have been the puma)
  • South Africa had the springbok (a kind of antelope or gazelle that jumped a lot); this was to some degree associated with The Apartheid Era and the use of the springbok to represent South Africa can be kind of contentious (although hardly anybody finds any fault in continuing to call the national rugby union team^note Yes, the one from Invictus the Springboks unofficially).
  • The Netherlands have the lion. At any given international sports event (mostly soccer), take a look and see how many of them have some sort of lion motif or decal on their clothing. Like so.◊
    • As the Dutch female soccer team rose to prominence, they began to associate with lionesses. This is represented in the emblem on their shirts, which is the same lion as the male team lacking mane.
  • Denmark has the mute swan as well as the small tortoiseshell butterfly.
  • Sweden has the blackbird.
  • The Philippines has the Philippine eagle, a giant eagle with a magnificent crest of plumage on its head. It's critically endangered due to habitat destruction and harming one comes with heavy legal consequences.
• The city of Baltimore, Maryland is generally associated with the raven, on account of Edgar Allan Poe's relationship with the city. Oddly, although there is a species of bird called a Baltimore oriole, that's actually named after Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore (the man after whom the city is named, as its yellow-and-black coloration matched that of his coat of arms) and is considered more of a symbol of the state of Maryland (which Lord Baltimore founded and in which Baltimore City sits) as a whole than of the city specifically. (Incidentally, Baltimore's two major-league professional sports teams are named after these birds—the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball, and the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League.)
• The English town of Maidstone originally had just a lion on its coat of arms, but in 1949, an Iguanodon was added to it as a means of commemorating the discovery of a nearly complete specimen in one of the town's quarries. This is noteworthy because it marks the first and so far only example of a non-avian dinosaur being a heraldic symbol.
• The four Asian Tigers (sometimes Dragons) (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) that saw very rapid economic growth from the 1970s through the 1990s. Now followed by the Little Tigers who rose starting in the '90s (more varied, but usually includes Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines).
  • Singapore itself is derived from its Malay name Singapura, which means "Lion City". The Lion is featured in the State Crest and national symbol. Alternatively, the Merlion, which combines the lion with a fish-like body, symbolizing the country's origins as a fishing village.
• The late great Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was ubiquitously dubbed the "Liberal Lion" of the Senate.
• Vladimir Putin's recent news coverage has increasingly linked him with tigers. First, he saved a camera crew from an angry tiger and then there was some talk about him getting one as a pet or something. Right-Hand Cat indeed.
• Continental officer Francis Marion was known as the "Swamp Fox" in the American Revolution because he could disappear into the South Carolina swamps like an elusive fox.
• Similarly there was Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox" of Germany in WW2.
• Most of Adolf Hitler's nicknames were the darkly associated with "wolf" or "wulf" (the name "Adolf" is a contraction of the Old High German name Athalwulf, i.e. "noble wolf"). His codename was also "werwolf", meaning "werewolf". Hitler also had military headquarters named after wolves; Wolfsschlucht I (Wolf's Gorge), Wolfsschlucht II (Wolf's Canyon) and the most prominent of them, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair). One of the lesser known esoteric symbols of the Nazis was the wolfsangel (Wolf's Hook), a heraldric symbol based on historic wolf traps. The wolfsangel symbolised liberty and independence and was used by the Schutzstaffel (specifically the 2nd SS Panzer Division of Nazi Germany).
• Some goths have the raven motif.
• The Brazilian real has a local animal in every banknote: a hummingbird in the now-discontinued R$1, turtle in R$2, heron in $5, macaw in R$10, tamarin in R$20, jaguar in R$50, and grouper in R$100.
• The Seven Deadly Sins have various animals representing them:
  • Envy is associated with dogs and snakes.
  • Gluttony is associated with pigs. Due to its close association with the demon Beelzebub, Gluttony is also occasionally associated with flying insects, due to Beelzebub being known as "lord of the flies".
  • Greed is associated with foxes, crows and frogs.
  • Lust is associated with cows, bulls, goats, and roosters (feel free to make the appropriate jokes about that one). Perhaps more surprisingly, Lust is also commonly associated with rabbits, due to their proficiency at multiplying.
  • Pride is associated with horses, lions and peacocks.
  • Sloth is associated with goats, snails, turtles and donkeys. Ironically, it is not often associated with actual sloths (which fit the sin perfectly), as they're native to South America and Europeans didn't encounter them until long after the symbolism was well established (the animal was actually named for the sin because they fit so perfectly). In the modern day at least, it's become common to associate Sloth with bears, presumably due to their tendency to hibernate in winter.
  • Wrath is associated with bulls, wolves, lions and bears.
• A lot of people think that Native Americans all believe in spirit animals. That is, an animal that specifically guides an individual through life. However, if this belief has a native origin at all it is restricted to only one or a few tribes. Probably the source of the confusion however is the practice of naming clans after animals: which is widespread although not universal. This is of course, not dissimilar from how many European families use animals in their heraldry.
  • Some cultures' zodiac systems use animal motifs as signs. For example, a Vietnamese born in the year of the Dog is said to "hold the spirit of the Dog", and allegedly have characteristics that the dog is associated with: loyalty, a short fuse (as an alert dog is quick to bark), prioritizing their loved ones' needs/crises over their own, etc.
• The Maasai of central-to-southeastern Africa seem to be rather attached to lion imagery, down to their traditional hairstyles (dreadlocked mane for men, and shaved down for women).
• The city of Charlotte, North Carolina seems to have a fondness for feline motifs, using cats to represent some of its most visible public institutions. The city's two most well-known athletic teams are the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League and the Charlotte Bobcats (now called the Charlotte Hornets) of the National Basketball Association, and its two most well-known public transportation systems are a bus system called "CATS" (Charlotte Area Transit System) and a light-rail system called "LYNX".
• The 2016 US Presidential Election notably saw two animal symbols catching on with several supporters of two of its top contenders; many supporters of Bernie Sanders adopted the bird as their personal symbol, while many supporters of Donald Trump used the lion. The bird caught on after a robin perched on Sanders' podium while he was giving a speech, prompting an enthusiastic response from the crowd, and (eventually) the Sanders campaign selling official merchandise with the "Birdie Sanders" symbol. The lion caught on after Trump attracted attention for tweeting Benito Mussolini's quote "It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep", and it eventually inspired the formation of an unofficial pro-Trump paramilitary group that called itself "The Lion Guard".
  • Trump supporters have also adopted the centipede after a video came out of Trump entering the debates to the song Centipede by Knife Party. As a results, some of Trump supporters use "pedes" to describe themselves.
• Animal rights groups (such as PETA) use rabbits/hares as a logo for their products, presumably because of their perceived status as harmless and innocent. When displaying their message of fighting animals, an image of boxing hares is used.
• The autistic community adopted cats as an animal motif for themselves, citing the large number of cognitive and behavioral similarities between the two of them, including (but not limited to) stimming, special interests, sensory sensitivity, love of and adherence to routines, anxiety towards unexpected change, and distinct and subtle body language that very frequently tends to be misinterpreted as being cold and emotionless (when the reality is that they just have alternative means of expressing emotion).
• Richard I was associated with lions due to his nickname "Richard the Lionheart", which was a result of his skills as a warrior and leader.
• Khâgne (a French two-years program for preparing undergraduate students for Humanities in higher education) tends to associate students with owls because A) they're really look like they're wearing Nerd Glasses and B) students often pull all-nighters to work on their grades, fitting with the bird's nocturnal lifestyle.
• Ironically, H. P. Lovecraft is often associated with octopuses due to his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Where there are references to H.P. Lovecraft; there are tentacles in the background or a marine theme. The irony is that H.P. Lovecraft was terrified of the ocean and equally terrified of marine life.
• Diogenes of Sinope was frequently compared to dogs by the public for his uncouth behaviour and lack of public decency. His epithet in Greece was "The Dog", his philosophy was named after dogs as the word "κυνικός" means "Dog" or "Dog-like", and artists frequently depict him with dogs or as a dog. Diogenes was proud of this comparison and saw dogs as superior to man, one of his famous quotes is in response to his epithet.
  I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals."
• Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the president of Turkmenistan, associates himself with horses as he has written books about horses, wrote a poem about one of his horses, enters horse competitions, made it illegal to rename horses, has horse-themed decorations in his office, and calls himself the "People's horse breeder".
• Winston Churchill was nicknamed the "British Bulldog" for his jowly face, portly figure, and refusal to give up in the fight against the Nazis.
• In western cultures, rabbits are commonly used as a motif for high libido and promiscuity thanks to their reputation as explosive breeders. For instance, the adult magazine Playboy features a rabbit as its mascot and as the subject of the Playboy Bunny outfit.
• As mentioned above, the symbol of the Welsh people is a red dragon, but the Anglo-Saxon's were also represented by a white dragon. The conflict between the Welsh and Anglo-Saxons (English) was often represented in historical art as a fight between a red and white dragon.
• The short-lived American Progressive Party famously used the moose as its official emblem, prompting the nickname "The Bull Moose Party". An understandable choice, given that it was founded and led by well-known big game hunter Theodore Roosevelt, who supposedly remarked that he felt strong as a bull moose after he lost the Republican Presidential nomination to his protégé and former Secretary of War William Howard Taft. The association grew even stronger after Roosevelt famously gave a speech in Milwaukee shortly after surviving a gunshot wound from an assassination attempt, boasting that he was just as difficult to kill as his party's namesake animal.
  "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."

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