A quote from Howtospotacanadian. Thought I'd share it, Ehh.


  You can tell a lot about a country by its national animal. The United States uses the bald eagle: a large bird of prey. The United Kingdom has a lion: an imposing carnivore. China has a dragon, Germany has an eagle, India has a Bengal tiger, Italy has a wolf. All of these animals are strong, proud and majestic. They are regal. They show the world that the country is question is large, grand and impressive.

Canada has a beaver.

Beavers are large rodents. Of course, they're not the largest rodents. No, choosing the largest of a species would be very un-Canadian. No, beavers are the second-largest rodents in the world. They are very slow on land and they frighten easily. They would probably lose in a fight to any of the other national animals listed above.

Well, that's not entirely true. Dragons are fictional. Even a beaver could beat up a fictional creature. It would be a close fight though.

However, what beavers lack in size, strength and imposing physical stature they make up in ingenuity.

A beaver dam is a pretty impressive structure. Beavers are hard workers and quite intelligent. The dams that they build are quite strong and beavers are able to build new dams or repair damaged ones quite quickly. Beavers work together with other beavers in order to build their dams.

Small, hard working, social and intelligent?

Yes, it makes sense that the beaver is Canada's national animal.

Of course, those traits are not the reason why the beaver is the national animal. No, like many other great symbols, the beaver is a martyr. When the Europeans originally began settling Canada, the fur trade was very important. More often than not it was beaver pelts that were being traded.

That's right, it was in death that the beaver became the symbol of Canada.

The conversation that decided this designation must have been completely bizarre:

“So... this country needs a national animal.”
“Hmm... you know that little annoying rodent we've been killing for a while now? How about that?”
“Works for me! Well, now that we're done with that, let's play hockey.”

What about the elegant Cameltoe?

Ang2dogs wrote on Jan 29^th, 2012 at 10:01pm:





Matt

Hi Larry...

Not sure of Steve's intentions when he posted this thread but lately like the last few months there has been a woman politician who wants the Beaver changed to a Polar Bear.   

Made quite a scene for awhile.

Not sure if they tarred and feathered her and ran her sorry ass out of Ottawa or not.

The Hudson's Bay Company which was the largest company in the world at one point was built on the Beaver Pelt.

The Canadian interior north of the Great Lakes and accessible by canoe was opened because of the Beaver Pelts.

The Beaver is a symbol on our money.

Far too many folks come to Canada, get a foot in the political door, scream Happy Holidays and try to change Canadian Heritage when they should have stayed where they came from and made things better...

Those that were and are born here should pay a little closer attention in their History Lessons...

Doug, time to go to SpecSavers! THIS is a British Bulldog

You lot are lucky, England has a Bulldog, Canada has a Beaver. This is what New Zealand has:



The Kiwi is our National animal. Turns out it's an Auzzie.

It eats bugs. It can't even fly now but they flew from Australia.

The scariest thing about them it is their enclosure. It's all dark & spooky so the Kiwis eyes don't get hurt.

The Kiwi is an interesting bird but for a National animal it is a bit  .

And it turns out that it is an Australian.

New Zealanders are called kiwis so now we're being called Aussies.