\n No one involved in the choice had any idea what America and its rich catalog of fauna would look like on its 250th birthday<\/a>. Can the hastily chosen symbol of 13 ex-colonies still stand in for the United States today? Could some other animal do a better job?\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen animals become symbols, they often cease being animals,\u201d said Janet M. Davis, professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Instead, they become \u201cideological repositories,\u201d representations of nebulous values like freedom and strength, players in our national mythology.\n <\/p>\n \n So the bald eagle evolved into an abstraction, to be overlaid on pocket change, the corner mailbox, or the first moon landing. It is the emblem of the unexamined American experience, or even the unreal one: This week the president posted<\/a> an AI image of a nonexistent new White House decoration, a bald eagle in shiny gold hanging from a balcony.\n <\/p>\n \n What about the real animals of the United States, the ones who have shared a habitat with the American people for the past 250 years? I asked experts \u2014 ecologists, wildlife biologists, experts in American history and identity \u2014 to nominate a most American animal for our times. Some refused, citing the abundant diversity of American life, both wild and human. The rest had to decide what \u201cmost American\u201d meant: an ideal essence? A pragmatic survivor? Something that\u2019s been here all along, or a newcomer that\u2019s persisted and flourished?\n <\/p>\n \n Which animal had the best case?\n <\/p>\n \n Thomson\u2019s choice of the bald eagle followed a tradition of powerful or would-be powerful nations and empires using birds of prey as symbols. The eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, was a North American original, with a range that covered all 13 original colonies and which now spans the entire Lower 48 and extends to Alaska.\n <\/p>\n \n Jack E. Davis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and environmental history professor at the University of Florida, said the eagle still represents us well.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYes, it\u2019s a scavenger and fish robber, but we aren\u2019t perfect ourselves,\u201d said Davis, who also wrote a book on baldies. \u201cAnd what does the bald eagle say about 2026: It\u2019s proven to be a survivor, and so have we \u2014 so far.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For most of the first two centuries of America\u2019s existence, the living bird was much less beloved than the emblem. The bald eagle may have stood for martial prowess \u2014 in the Civil War, the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment carried a live eagle mascot<\/a> named Old Abe into dozens of battles against the Confederate Army, and historians say he lived through the experience \u2014 but the American public almost totally eradicated the first most American animal, considering them nuisances and even murderers, Davis said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBecause we believed for so long that bald eagles were flying away with livestock and human babies, killing a bald eagle was considered a public service,\u201d he said. (Bald eagles typically<\/a> can\u2019t lift more than four pounds.)\n <\/p>\n \n In the early days of the Republic, it\u2019s<\/a> estimated<\/a> there were between 100,000 to 300,000 \u201cbalds\u201d across the country. After almost two centuries of humans hunting them and stealing their habitats, while poisoning them on purpose or accidentally with egg-ruining pesticide, there were 417 nesting pairs left. In the decades since the Bicentennial, the species has pulled off a remarkable recovery, with the help of the Endangered Species Act and a national ban on the pesticide DDT; their population is now over 300,000, and the bald eagles\u2019 success can be seen as a testament of American persistence and redemption, Davis said.\n <\/p>\n \n The Department of the Interior called the bird\u2019s comeback \u201cthe greatest triumph in the history of American wildlife conservation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe soaring bald eagle stands as a living monument to American resilience, stewardship, and our shared commitment to protecting our natural heritage,\u201d the department said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n \n For all its heraldic ubiquity, the bald eagle was not formally named America\u2019s national bird until 2024. That put it eight years behind the national mammal, the bison, which was enshrined during the final year of the Obama administration.\n <\/p>\n \n The prize-winning documentarian Ken Burns, through a spokesperson, declared the bison his choice for the most American animal. Unlike the eagle, the bison only ranged into the mountainous edges of the Colonies, but their prodigious size and unimaginable numbers \u2014 tens of millions of them covering the Great Plains \u2014 made them a vivid symbol of the growing nation\u2019s continent-sized ambitions.\n <\/p>\n \n Pre-colonization, Native American tribes in the West and Midwest hunted bison for food, fur and tools made from their bones, but many tribes maintained a respectful relationship with them, too, and considered them sacred<\/a>. Once colonists entered the picture, the bison, much like the bald eagle, was driven to near extinction, its population dropping to a few hundred by the end of the 19th century.\n <\/p>\n \n The bison\u2019s return has been slower than the bald eagle\u2019s, and has needed more active help. The billionaire animal lover Ted Turner helped bison rebound, growing a herd of 45,000 bison across six states. (Turner was CNN\u2019s founder. He also co-founded a restaurant chain that serves<\/a> various bison dishes.) They\u2019ve been reintroduced to the West and Great Plains; now they\u2019ve recovered to the point that tourists at Yellowstone National Park ignore warnings and are gored by the beasts<\/a> when they get too close.\n <\/p>\n \n The bison, with its huge bludgeoning head and potential one-ton weight, embodies another aspect of how America thinks of itself. Since the United States\u2019 founding, animals have been used as living proof of the country\u2019s dominance, superiority and size.\n <\/p>\n \n In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador to France, had a 7-foot-tall moose killed in the woods of New Hampshire and shipped its carcass across the Atlantic to a French naturalist who believed life in the New World was \u201csmaller and more degenerate\u201d than in Europe. The moose was used \u201cessentially as a piece of evidence: look how big we grow things here,\u201d said Mackenzie Cooley, an associate professor of history at Hamilton College.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe moose is the most American animal because we once deployed one as a diplomatic argument about national worth,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s defensiveness and bigness and wanting Europe\u2019s respect, all in one animal.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In one notable case, an American animal\u2019s domineering size is strictly relative. The Eastern gray squirrel may be a nuisance on its home turf, but Americans see it as a diminutive one. When it hitched a ride to the United Kingdom, though, it became a \u201csymbol of anti-Americanism\u201d by bullying Britain\u2019s smaller and more disease-susceptible red squirrels into decline, said Harriet Ritvo, emeritus professor of environmental history and human-animal studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The American interlopers, nearly twice as heavy as the natives, have gradually replaced them across much of their range.\n <\/p>\n \n They\u2019ve become so hated, Ritvo said, that they\u2019re described the same way some Brits used to identify American soldiers in World War II who were stationed in the UK: \u201cOverpaid, oversexed and over here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n Pests, opportunists and survivors<\/p>\n \n Maybe the competition to be the most American animal isn\u2019t a popularity contest at all. Almost universally reviled as a pest, thief and plague-bringer, the rat is a harder sell for the title most American animal. But rats are who we really are, said urban ecologist Michael Parsons.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEvery iconic American animal is just a fantasy: the eagle\u2019s flight, the strength of the grizzly, the nobility of big cats,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we aren\u2019t any of those things! Rats represent the America we actually built \u2014 densely populated, wasteful, too busy for hygiene.\u201d (\u201cI don\u2019t think Americans are distinctive in that way,\u201d Ritvo said, of the overlapping nastiness between humans and rats.)\n <\/p>\n \n The skulking, yapping coyote would probably not be most Americans\u2019 choice for their animal stand-in, either. But it has adapted better than almost any other species to mass onslaught of humans into its habitat. The coyote lives in 49 states, like the bald eagle, and it was a significant figure in Native American folklore, alternately helpful and malevolent.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s the rare wild species that has enlarged its range even as the United States cleared and plowed and paved the continent, despite repeated attempts to cull its growing population<\/a>, said Erim G\u00f3mez, assistant professor of wildlife biology at the University of Montana. Freed from pressure from their physically stronger, ecologically more sensitive gray wolf cousins, coyotes have claimed new opportunities from coast to coast, even in the biggest cities.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cCoyotes have persisted and expanded despite more than a century of intensive efforts to eradicate them,\u201d G\u00f3mez said. \u201cToday, the USDA Wildlife Services partnered with states to provide professional coyote removal. Even with these efforts, coyotes have been difficult to eliminate.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Raccoons, also a regular target of pest control projects, are similar survivors, clever and dexterous and enterprising enough to live off human trash. Graphically distinct, the omnivorous bandits can live almost anywhere in the US, from deep forests to crowded cities on both coasts.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think if we have anything like a nuclear winter, where everything above 20 pounds goes extinct, I think they\u2019re going to be in charge, because they have hands,\u201d Ritvo said.\n <\/p>\n \n One of the most numerous and widespread creatures in the country wasn\u2019t here at all when the Founders were debating graphic design. European starlings got a late start in the United States \u2014 the socialite Eugene Schieffelin was said to have released 100 of them in New York\u2019s Central Park in 1890 just as winter was starting to thaw, although there were other starling releases in that era, and the story that Schieffelin wanted all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare to appear in the New World is likely exaggerated. Whatever first got them going, the stubby, speckled interlopers thrived, and now there are anywhere from 80 to 200 million of them in the US. (There are an estimated<\/a> 110 million northern cardinals, by comparison.)\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs America is a land of immigrants, the starling is in many ways the ultimate American animal,\u201d said Charles Siebert, a professor of practice at New York University-Abu Dhabi and wildlife journalist.\n <\/p>\n \n But the country\u2019s immigrant history is the reason there cannot be one most American animal, said Yale University wildlife and land conservation professor Nyeema Harris. No one animal can represent the diversity of experience and culture that has shaped American identity, she said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s America because we have bald eagles and timber rattlesnakes and black-footed ferrets. All are valued, all are needed, and all are celebrations of America,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n \n There are some other less-sung animals that helped make America: Davis nominated the pig, a non-native species whose mistreatment in the early days of the pork industry inspired a movement to improve conditions for animals and workers in slaughterhouses and whose fictional avatars, like Wilbur, have endeared people to animal causes. Horses evolved in North America, went extinct here, then returned to partner with Native Americans and European pioneers alike, and to roam free on their own as wild mustangs. Beavers were the original American engineers, transforming landscapes and dictating the flow of freshwater before their thick fur, targeted by trappers, became the foundation of trade and finance.\n <\/p>\n \n The fire ant, an arrival from South America, is another excellent architect, though not as well-liked as the beaver. But its society is complex and capable of building rafts and towers, said David Hu, an engineering professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who studies bioengineering.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt is also aggressive with a sting and bite,\u201d Hu said.\n <\/p>\n \n Rattlesnakes may not seem like a flattering comparison, either, but they\u2019re \u201cextremely American,\u201d Ritvo said. They live all over the country, for one, and the founders frequently deployed the reptiles in insignia, propaganda and political cartoons to promote colonial unity and American sovereignty in the years before the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin drew a chopped-up snake to discourage colonial disunity in his \u201cJOIN, OR DIE\u201d cartoon. The coiled rattler on the Gadsden flag was an emblem of American independence; it\u2019s since been adopted by libertarians, Tea Party Republicans and conservatives hostile to government overreach or any perceived threats to their view of American supremacy.\n <\/p>\n \n Americans tend to wax nostalgic about bygone, \u201csimpler\u201d times, so a disappearing species might be the most fitting emblem of an America many miss: Fireflies, as American as summer camp and backyard barbeques, are in decline, said Daniel Kronauer, a professor at The Rockefeller University who studies insect societies. Theirs is not a \u201cdramatic extinction, but a gradual dimming, noticed first in backyards and fields, and measured in the gut feeling that there are fewer lights out there than there used to be.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s more American to ignore encroaching darkness than stare into the abyss.\n <\/p>\n \n Eagles and coyotes and fireflies all make compelling contenders for most American animal, but I keep returning to Franklin\u2019s turkey. It has a less dramatic narrative than some other contenders; its bald, dwarfish head and dangling wattle don\u2019t scream \u201cmajesty.\u201d It was hunted by colonists, too, for food rather than sport or profit, and its survival is also a conservation success story. (Rebounding from a low of 30,000 in the 1900s to 7 million today is still impressive, said Cooley.)\n <\/p>\n \n Turkeys were tamed and domesticated by Indigenous people and colonists, till they were the mainstay of the Thanksgiving dinner. Plenty of European countries have their own native eagles. But no other continent has a bird quite as bizarre or delicious as a turkey.\n <\/p>\n \n For Franklin, \u201cthe turkey is the anti-aristocratic bird \u2014 democracy with feathers,\u201d said Cooley. \u201cFranklin\u2019s preference is really a populist argument: the eagle is the heraldic emblem of Old World empire \u2026 and the turkey is the homely, useful, everyman bird. Choosing the turkey is choosing the republic over the crown.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Might the turkey be the most apt avatar for America 250 years on? It\u2019s a living rebuke of European supremacy, like Jefferson\u2019s sacrificial moose. And like bison, turkeys can aggress overfamiliar humans and launch frightening attacks when needed, usually aided by their faithful flocks. They\u2019ve adapted to life in the most densely packed cities<\/a> in the country, like raccoons, rats and coyotes. They\u2019re a literal centerpiece of a secular American cultural tradition and the story we tell about early Americans, like the regal bald eagle. Except turkeys are twice as heavy as bald eagles, and more resplendent and colorful \u2014 a plump Tom\u2019s face is even dipped in red, white and blue.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe turkey is most American,\u201d Cooley said, \u201cprecisely because we\u2019ve never quite agreed on whether to laugh at it or salute it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1782, a lesser-known Founding Father, Charles Thomson, slapped a shield onto a bald eagle with talons full…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[15901,18,19,17,133,461],"class_list":["post-567035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ctt","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116856407819307973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783087175_419_01-00719-2002-001-ac.jpg\")
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