National Animals of Europe: Country List, Facts and Myths

Official, traditional or mythical?

National animals reach their status in three main ways. Some come from coats of arms that are set out in law: Poland’s constitution, for example, describes its coat of arms as a crowned white eagle on a red field. Others, especially national birds, were chosen in campaigns by bird societies or in newspaper and television polls, which gives them public support but rarely legal status. A third group is simply traditional, such as the Gallic rooster of France or the Russian bear.

Many of the animals on coats of arms are heraldic creatures rather than real species. A heraldic eagle or lion is a stylized symbol, and several countries use animals, such as unicorns and dragons, that never lived anywhere.

Lions: Europe’s favorite heraldic animal

The lion is the most common animal in European heraldry. England’s royal arms have shown three gold lions on a red shield since King Richard I adopted the design in 1198, and the three lions still appear on the badges of England’s football and cricket teams. Lions also appear on the coats of arms of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, whose white lion has two tails.

Medieval nobles chose the lion as a symbol of courage, strength and royal power. Lions were not as foreign to Europe as they seem: they lived in Greece in ancient times, where Herodotus described them as common around 480 BC, but they were gone by about AD 100.

Eagles: Germany, Poland, Austria, Albania and Russia

Eagles are the second great heraldic family, inherited from the eagle standards of ancient Rome and the Holy Roman Empire. Germany’s federal eagle, the Bundesadler, is a black eagle with red beak and claws on a gold shield, adopted by West Germany in 1950. Austria’s black eagle holds a sickle and a hammer, and Poland’s crowned White Eagle, according to legend, recalls a white eagle’s nest found by the country’s founder, Lech.

Double-headed eagles, a symbol from the Byzantine Empire, appear on the coat of arms of Russia and on the black-and-red flag of Albania, where they recall the 15th-century hero Skanderbeg. Albanians popularly explain their own name for the country, Shqipëria, as “land of the eagles.” The real birds behind these symbols are usually large species such as the golden eagle and the white-tailed eagle.

Mythical national animals: unicorn, dragon and turul

Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn. Unicorns supported the royal arms of the Kings of Scots, and gold coins called unicorns were struck in Scotland in the 15th and 16th centuries. Since the crowns of Scotland and England were united, the royal arms have been held by an English lion on one side and a Scottish unicorn on the other. Medieval Europeans believed in unicorns partly because narwhal tusks were sold as unicorn horns; read Are narwhals real? for the true story.

Wales has a red dragon, Y Ddraig Goch, on its national flag. Henry Tudor carried a red dragon standard at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and the modern flag was officially recognized in 1959. Hungary’s symbol is the turul, a mythical bird of prey from the founding legends of the Árpád dynasty, probably based on a large falcon such as the saker.

National birds chosen by naturalists and public votes

Several countries have national birds picked by bird lovers rather than by heralds:

• Lithuania: the white stork, which nests on roofs and poles near farms. Lithuania has the highest known density of breeding white storks in the world, about 13,000 pairs in a 2004–2005 census. The stork is also a national bird of Belarus and Poland.
• Finland: the whooper swan, the national bird since 1981, which appears on the Finnish 1 euro coin.
• Denmark: the mute swan, chosen in 1984 to replace the skylark, which had held the title since 1960.
• Estonia: the barn swallow, chosen in the early 1960s after a campaign by ornithologists.
• Latvia: the white wagtail, a small black-and-white bird that features in Latvian folk songs.
• Norway: the white-throated dipper, a stocky bird that walks underwater in fast streams.
• Sweden: the common blackbird, one of the country’s most familiar songbirds.
• Netherlands: the black-tailed godwit, a meadow wader voted national bird in 2015.
• Malta: the blue rock thrush, national bird since 1971 and once shown on the Maltese one-lira coin.
• United Kingdom: the European robin, which won a 1960s vote publicized by The Times and a 2015 poll organized by birdwatcher David Lindo, although it has no official status.

Bears, wolves, bison and other mammals

Finland’s national animal is the brown bear, which still roams its eastern forests. The bear is also a long-standing symbol of Russia, although Russia has no officially designated national animal. In 2018, Estonians elected the gray wolf as their national animal. Italy has no official national animal, but the Italian wolf is unofficially treated as one, a nod to the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus in the legend of Rome’s founding.

Croatia’s symbol is the pine marten. Its currency until the switch to the euro on January 1, 2023, was the kuna, meaning “marten,” because marten pelts were once used as payment in medieval trade, and a marten now appears on Croatia’s 1 euro coin. Cyprus chose the Cyprus mouflon, a rare wild sheep found only in the mountains of the Paphos district, which appears on the island’s 1, 2 and 5 cent euro coins.

The European bison, or wisent, is a national animal of both Poland and Belarus. The last wild bison was killed in 1927, but the species was bred back from 48 animals in zoos and now roams freely again in the Białowieża Forest on the border between the two countries.

Roosters and bulls: France, Portugal and Spain

France’s Gallic rooster grew out of a Latin pun: gallus means both a rooster and an inhabitant of Gaul. The rooster represents the French people, while Marianne represents the French Republic, and it appears on the shirts of French sports teams. Portugal’s popular symbol is the Rooster of Barcelos, from a folk legend in which a roasted rooster crowed to prove the innocence of a pilgrim falsely accused of theft.

Spain has no official national animal, but the black bull is a widely recognized symbol, helped by the giant Osborne bull billboards, 14 m (46 ft) tall, that stand beside Spanish roads. They began as advertisements, but after a public outcry they were allowed to stay as part of Spain’s cultural landscape.

National animals of Europe at a glance

National animals are just as varied on the other side of the Atlantic, from the bald eagle to the Andean condor; see our list of national animals of the Americas.