Animals of State

By Terry Morse

Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson is best know for his research on ants, his writing on the importance of biological diversity to life on earth, and his sometimes controversial approach to understanding behavior, called “sociobiology.” (See references at end of article.) In 1984, Wilson proposed the “biophilia hypothesis,” which argues that humans have an innate, genetically determined attraction to nature. It is easy to doubt this every time a sensational case of animal abuse makes the evening news, or you see someone intentionally stepping on a harmless woolly bear caterpillar. On the other hand, many people bond strongly with their pets and love to feed squirrels and gulls. As a child growing up in New York City, relatively isolated from nature, I couldn’t resist keeping fiddler crabs and dime-store turtles as apartment pets, so perhaps there is something to the hypothesis after all.

Homo sapiens is a symbolizing species. Another symptom of biophilia may be the drive many citizens and legislators feel to designate state animals, flowers, rocks, and fossils. Examining the choices they have made can tell us a lot about how Americans feel about nature.

Twenty-five states have designated state animals. All are mammals, which reflects the tendency of people to equate “animal” with “mammal.” (How many times have you heard people refer to “birds, fish, and animals?”) Ethnobiologists, anthropologists who study the way people classify and think about nature, have long known that “folk taxonomies” often differ from those used by biologists. Many states make finer distinctions, such as between land, aquatic, and marine animals, or between wild, domestic, and fur-bearing mammals.

Oregon’s state animal is, of course, the beaver. We share our totem with New York, my state of origin. Three states have non-native, domesticated state animals (Missouri - the Missouri mule, New Jersey - the horse, and Vermont - the Morgan horse) . South Dakota is unusual in celebrating the coyote, considered a “varmint” in most places. Surprisingly, no state has chosen the pronghorn, the most American of all mammals - it is the sole surviving member of a family that evolved in North America and lives nowhere else.

Delaware celebrates the horseshoe crab, a distant marine relative of spiders, as its state marine animal. It is the only state to have an invertebrate state animal. There is a definite bias towards vertebrates, particularly mammals. Missouri, however, has a fish, the paddlefish, as its state aquatic animal.

All fifty states have a state bird (birds generally have good PR), but some birds are significantly more popular than others. The northern cardinal, a bright red crested bird with a coal-black facial mask, was chosen by seven states (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia); the western meadowlark by six (Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wyoming); and the mockingbird by five (Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas). Gulls as a rule get pretty poor press, but that didn’t stop Utah from designating the California gull as its state bird. This is connected to Utah history, where gulls saved the fledgling Mormon settlers from starvation by devouring a plague of locusts that had settled on their crops.

While mammals and birds are most frequently chosen as state symbols, forty-three states have official state fish. A few have designated both freshwater and marine fish (or cold water and warm water in land-locked Vermont; commercial and sport for Tennessee) for a total of 49 state fish. Twenty-one of these are salmon or trout; three states chose channel catfish (Missouri, Nebraska, and Tennessee). Virtually all are game fish. Florida’s state salt water fish is the Atlantic sailfish, renowned for giving anglers a good fight. Oregon’s single fish is the chinook salmon, although one could argue that its meaning in Northwest culture is much broader than its fishability. The bright orange garibaldi, California’s state marine fish, is strictly protected, with “severe penalties” for spearing them, or retaining them if caught by line (Humann, 1996)

Ten states have state amphibians. A few are prosaic, such as Oklahoma’s bullfrog, but most are more exotic. New Mexico has the Southern spadefoot toad, which uses a hard spur (the “spade”) on each hind foot to bury itself in the mud to survive drought. Tennessee chose the Tennessee cave salamander, a large, endangered cave-dweller with reduced eyes that spends its entire life as a gilled aquatic “larva.”

There are eighteen state reptiles. Eight are turtles (seven fresh or brackish water, one marine - South Carolina’s loggerhead turtle); three are tortoises (desert tortoise - California and Nevada; gopher tortoise - Georgia); three are lizards (collared lizard - Oklahoma; horned lizard - Texas; and horned toad - Wyoming); and two are snakes (ridge-nosed rattlesnake - Arizona; Northern black racer - Ohio). The American alligator is the favorite of two states, Florida and Louisiana, and who can blame them? While I can understand Arizona’s affection for the rattlesnake, I’m surprised they didn’t choose the Gila monster, which just breathes “Southwest desert.”

Invertebrates fare pretty well in the state animal popularity poll, thanks primarily to insects: thirty-six states declare a state insect, fourteen a state butterfly, and even one a state spider, the Carolina wolf spider (South Carolina)! A few insects account for most of the declarations: the honey bee, an introduced species, took the honors in fifteen states. Ladybugs won in five, and the monarch butterfly was preferred in four states. It was also state butterfly in Minnesota and West Virginia , which have no state insect, and in Vermont, whose state insect is the honey bee. No state chose native bumble bees, the teddy bears of the insect world.

While insects were the most popular invertebrates, there are also two state crustaceans (the crawfish, in Louisiana, and the blue crab in Maryland); and one state shellfish, Connecticut’s eastern oyster. These were probably chosen for their edibility. Twelve states have designated state shells. I’m guessing that it is the shell, not its inhabitant, that is popular. Oregon’s state shell is the hairy triton, a large (to 6") snail in need of a shave, that favors subtidal rocky bottoms. Ian Sheldon characterizes it:

An aggressive predator, the triton has a rare and peculiar preference for sea urchins at which they peck away. Living sea urchins bearing small black scars are the evidence to its foraging. Tunicates are also eaten. Males can be somewhat possessive about their mates, hitching a ride on a female’s back and fending off other males.

(Sheldon, 1998).

Just about everyone loves flowers, but space prohibits me from going into detail about them. I will pass along that all fifty states have state flowers, wild or cultivated. Nine designate both cultivated and wild flowers. As with shellfish, it isn’t clear whether people admire the whole plant, or just the flower. Texas, to be perfectly clear, has a state flower (any species of bluebonnet), a state plant (the prickly pear cactus), and a state shrub (the crape myrtle). Oldsters may remember U.S. First Lady Ladybird Johnson, who campaigned to beautify America, particularly its roadsides, in the 1960s. In 1982, she founded a wildflower center in Austin, Texas (http://www.wildflower.org/), that still exists. Her dedication to wildflowers probably explains the state’s many plant categories. Two states honor the lowly fungus: Minnesota the morel mushroom, and Oregon the Pacific golden chanterelle.

Geological features are also popular, with virtually all states having either a state gem, mineral, rock, stone, fossil, or dinosaur, or some combination of these categories. Several states have memorialized petrified wood in one or more of the categories (Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Texas, and Washington). Oregon’s state gemstone is the sunstone (plagioclase feldspar), a coppery red stone that has been found in Viking burial mounds. Its state rock is the “thunderegg,” or geode. While most state symbols are the result of plain, ordinary citizen action, or of politicians with too much time on their hands, you can be pretty sure that a concerted professional effort is behind the designation of state soils: fourteen states have them! Alas, Oregon does not. Neither does Oregon have a state fossil. Newport’s own Guy DiTorrice, Oregon Fossil Guy, is campaigning to have the dawn redwood declared the state fossil. Visit his web site, http://www.oregonfossilguy.com/, for more information.

Despite the many exciting discoveries being made by the Hubble space telescope, and President Bush’s desire to put humans on Mars by 2020, most states have overlooked astronomy in their symbolizing. The state star of Delaware is the Delaware Diamond, a very faint (12^th magnitude) star in Ursa Major, the Great Bear. Utah’s state star is Dubhe, one of the two stars in the Big Dipper that point towards 2^nd magnitude Polaris, the North Star. The Beehive State’s centennial astronomical feature is the Beehive Cluster in Cancer, probably because of the importance of bees in Mormon culture.

So you see, much can be learned about our attitude towards nature by examining the plants, animals, rocks, and fossils we choose to invest with meaning and significance. If you want to explore this further, here are some excellent web sites to visit:

The State History Guide: http://www.shgresources.com/resources/symbols/

StateAnimals.com: http://www.stateanimals.com/

StateFossils.com: http://www.statefossils.com/

or do a web search for “state animal,” “state fossil,” or “state symbol” to locate other sites. Your adventure in amateur ethnoscience is just a mouse-click away.

References

Humann, Paul. 1996. Coastal Fish Identification: California to Alaska. Jacksonville, FL: New World Publications.

Holldobler, Bert, and Edward O. Wilson. 1994. Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Investigation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Sheldon, Ian. 1998. Seashore of the Pacific Northwest. Renton, WA: Lone Pine Publishing.

Wilson, Edward O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wilson, Edward O. 1992. The Diversity of Life. NY: W. W. Norton.

© 2005 Terry Morse

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