Where animals come from
Pets, farm animals and wild species often live far from where they began. Each story shows where an animal or a breed originally comes from.
31 stories from 6 continents
- Africa · 4
- Asia · 9
- Europe · 8
- North America · 3
- South America · 3
- Oceania · 4
Africa
African grey parrot
📍 Equatorial Africa (Congo basin, Ivory Coast to Kenya)
The grey parrot, one of the best talkers among birds, comes from the forests of equatorial Africa, from Ivory Coast to Kenya. More than a million wild ones were probably traded between 1982 and 2001, and wild numbers are still falling.
Basenji (dog breed)
📍 Congo basin, Central Africa
The basenji doesn't bark: it yodels. This 'barkless' hunting dog comes from villages of the Congo basin in Central Africa, and the breed was established in England in the 1930s from dogs brought from the Congo region.
Meerkat
📍 Kalahari, southern Africa (Botswana, Namibia & South Africa)
Meerkats live in the dry, open country of the Kalahari and Karoo in southern Africa. Some members of each group always stand sentry, and adults teach pups to eat scorpions by first removing the stinger.
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Ring-tailed lemur
📍 Southern & southwestern Madagascar
Ring-tailed lemurs live wild only in southern and southwestern Madagascar. Troops sunbathe in a 'yoga position', bellies to the sun, and rival males waft smelly tails at each other in 'stink fights'.
Asia
Chicken
📍 Mainland Southeast Asia
Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.
Domestic goat
📍 Fertile Crescent (Zagros & Taurus mountains)
Goats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the hills of the Fertile Crescent. The oldest known herded goats come from Ganj Dareh in Iran's Zagros Mountains, where their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, still lives.
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Dromedary (one-humped camel)
📍 Southern & southeastern Arabian Peninsula
One-humped camels were first tamed in southern Arabia, and today they live only as domestic or feral animals. Their famous hump is a store of fat, not water.
Golden hamster (the pet hamster)
📍 Near Aleppo, Syria
In 1930 zoologist Israel Aharoni caught a mother hamster and her litter near Aleppo, Syria. DNA studies show all domestic golden hamsters descend from one female, probably that very mother.
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Koi (ornamental carp)
📍 Ojiya & Yamakoshi, Niigata, Japan
Koi were first bred about 200 years ago by farmers in the mountain villages of Niigata, Japan, who raised plain black carp for food. The colourful new fish were a sensation when they were shown at a 1914 exhibition in Tokyo.
Leopard gecko
📍 Indus valley, Pakistan
One of the world's most popular pet lizards comes from the dry, rocky Indus River country of Pakistan; the first pets were probably shipped from Karachi in the 1960s. Unlike most geckos it can blink, but it has no sticky toe pads.
Peacock (Indian peafowl)
📍 Indian subcontinent (India & Sri Lanka)
Peafowl come from the Indian subcontinent, and the peacock is India's national bird. His dazzling 'tail' is really a train of extra-long feathers that grow over his real tail, and their shimmer comes from tiny structures, not pigment.
Siamese cat
📍 Thailand (formerly Siam)
Siamese cats come from Thailand, once called Siam, where old manuscripts of 'Cat-Book Poems' describe them. In 1878 the American consul in Bangkok sent one, named Siam, to the White House as a gift for Lucy Hayes: the first documented Siamese in the US.
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Snow monkey (Japanese macaque)
📍 Honshu, Shikoku & Kyushu, Japan
No monkey lives farther north than the Japanese macaque, found on Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. In the snowy mountains near Nagano, some troops even warm up in hot springs in winter, a habit that began in the 1960s.
Europe
Dobermann (dog breed)
📍 Apolda, Thuringia, Germany
The Dobermann was first bred in the late 1800s in Apolda, in central Germany, by Louis Dobermann, a tax collector who also ran a dog pound. With dogs of many breeds at hand, he set out to create the ideal dog to protect him.
European rabbit
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
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Golden Retriever (dog breed)
📍 Guisachan estate, Scottish Highlands, UK
The golden retriever is a Highlander. In 1868, at his Guisachan estate, Sir Dudley Marjoribanks mated a yellow retriever called Nous with a Tweed Water Spaniel called Belle, and their four yellow pups founded the breed.
Great Dane (dog breed)
📍 Germany
Despite its name, the Great Dane is a German breed with no known link to Denmark. Germans call it the Deutsche Dogge; the 'Dane' comes from its French name, grand danois.
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Icelandic horse
📍 Iceland
Icelandic horses descend from ponies brought by Norse settlers more than 1,000 years ago. Today no horse may be imported into Iceland, and one that leaves can never come back. Many can do an extra-smooth gait called the tölt.
Lipizzaner (horse breed)
📍 Lipica, Slovenia
Vienna's famous white Lipizzaners are named after Lipica in Slovenia, where their stud was founded in 1580. White only became the norm later, and the Spanish Riding School still keeps a bay horse for luck.
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Merino sheep
📍 Iberian Peninsula
Merino sheep were developed in medieval Spain, which guarded the fine-wool breed as a monopoly: smuggling one out could mean death. Merinos only reached Australia in 1797, via South Africa.
Yorkshire Terrier (dog breed)
📍 Mill towns of Yorkshire, England, UK
The silky Yorkie began as a working ratter: in the 1800s Scottish weavers brought their terriers to the mill towns of Yorkshire, England, where the dogs hunted rats in the mills. It was first shown as the 'Broken Haired Scotch Terrier'.
North America
Australian Shepherd (dog breed)
📍 Western USA (California to the Rockies)
Despite its name, the Aussie was developed by ranchers in the western United States in the 1800s, probably named after collies that came with sheep from Australia. A rodeo performer's trick dogs made it famous in the mid-1900s.
Bengal cat
📍 California, USA
Despite its name, the Bengal cat was created in the United States: breeder Jean Mill crossed a wild Asian leopard cat with a house cat in 1963 and founded the breed in California in the 1980s. 'Bengal' comes from the leopard cat's scientific name.
Eastern grey squirrel
📍 Eastern North America
Britain's grey squirrels are American: the species is native to eastern North America and was released on British estates from the 1870s. It has since displaced most of Britain's native red squirrels.
South America
Galápagos giant tortoise
📍 Galápagos Islands, Ecuador
Early Spanish explorers named the Galápagos Islands after these giants. The tortoises can weigh over 400 kg and live for more than 100 years, and their differences from island to island fed Charles Darwin's thinking when he visited in 1835.
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Guppy
📍 Northeastern South America & Trinidad
Guppies come from the streams of northeastern South America and nearby islands like Trinidad. They're named after Robert Guppy, who sent specimens from Trinidad to London, and were later released worldwide to eat mosquito larvae.
Neon tetra (aquarium fish)
📍 Western Amazon (Brazil, Peru & Colombia)
The neon tetra comes from dark blackwater streams of the western Amazon, where Brazil, Peru and Colombia meet. Most neons sold in the US are now farm-raised in Southeast Asia, and their glowing stripes fade to grey at night while they rest.
Oceania
Blue heeler (Australian Cattle Dog)
📍 Hunter Valley & Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
The blue heeler was bred in New South Wales: in the 1800s Thomas Hall crossed collies with dingoes in the Hunter Valley, and Sydney breeders later refined the dogs. 'Heeler' comes from its knack for moving stubborn cattle by nipping at their heels.
Budgerigar (budgie)
📍 Inland Australia
Wild budgies live across the dry interior of Australia, and every wild one is green and yellow. The blue, white and yellow pets are colour forms bred in captivity, where budgies have been raised since the 1850s.
Kiwi (the bird)
📍 New Zealand
Kiwi are flightless birds found only in New Zealand. Surprisingly, their closest relatives aren't the moa they lived alongside but the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar.
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Platypus
📍 Eastern Australia, from Queensland to Tasmania
When British scientists first examined a platypus in 1799, they suspected a hoax: zoologist George Shaw even cut into the skin, looking for stitches holding on the duck's bill. It lives only in the rivers and lakes of eastern Australia.