The donkey is one of the most misunderstood animals in American culture. Most people know it as stubborn, slow, or simply the butt of a joke,…

Few animals get a reaction as immediate as the skunk. Most people picture the black-and-white stripe, the raised tail, and the smell before…

The red panda is a strange case in the world of animal symbolism: an animal most Americans didn’t know much about until fairly recently,…

Few insects carry as much symbolic weight in American life as the monarch butterfly. With its bold orange-and-black wings and a migration that…

“Bunny” isn’t just a cuter word for rabbit — it carries its own separate set of associations in American culture. Where…

Rabbits show up everywhere in American life — on greeting cards, in nursery decor, tattooed on forearms, and hopping across lawns every…