Flags With Animals (28)

Where these 28 flags are in the world

Counting by continent is the quickest way to see whether a design tradition is regional or global. North America accounts for the largest share of this collection with 8 of the 28.

Eagles: the heraldic default

The eagle is the most reused animal in flag design, and almost always an inheritance from European or imperial heraldry. Albania's double-headed eagle descends from Byzantine use, as does Serbia's and Montenegro's. Mexico's eagle is different in origin: it depicts an Aztec founding legend, an eagle on a prickly pear cactus devouring a snake, marking the site where Tenochtitlan was to be built. Egypt's is the Eagle of Saladin. Same bird, entirely unrelated reasons.

Endemic species as identity

A second group picks an animal found only there, which turns the flag into a claim about place rather than lineage. Papua New Guinea shows a bird-of-paradise. Dominica shows the sisserou parrot, found on that island and nowhere else, and is the only national flag using the colour purple. Kiribati shows a frigatebird over the Pacific. Uganda shows the grey crowned crane. Bhutan shows a dragon, which is not endemic to anywhere, but is the country's own name for itself — Druk Yul, the land of the thunder dragon.

These are the easiest flags in the whole dataset to identify, because a specific species is a fingerprint. If you can name the animal, you can usually name the country.

Animals hidden inside coats of arms

Some animals are not obvious at flag size. Spain's arms contain lions and castles that are illegible on a small flag; Fiji's shield carries a lion holding a cocoa pod; Belize's arms are flanked by two woodcutters and a mahogany tree rather than an animal, which is why it does not appear in this list. Where the creature is buried in a crest, our dataset tags the flag by the emblem you can actually see, so a few flags with animals in their heraldry appear under coats of arms instead.