Reference

Animals on Banknotes: A Field Guide to the World's Wildlife Currency

Put a politician on a banknote and half the country argues. Put a rhinoceros on it and nobody does. That is roughly why wildlife has become one of the most common themes in modern banknote design, from South Africa's Big Five to Canada's Birds of Canada series and Costa Rica's sloths and sharks.

28 sourced notes 5 countries Birds on 15 of 28 Big Five since 1992

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Last updated: September 2026

Which countries have animals on their banknotes?

South Africa, Australia, Mexico, Costa Rica and Canada all put animals on their money, and they do it for different reasons: national identity, biodiversity, accessibility, and in at least one documented case, political neutrality.

The Bank of Canada Museum is unusually blunt about the motive. Explaining the 1986 Birds of Canada series, it records that "birds were chosen not only as clear and simple subjects, but for their beauty, popularity and political neutrality" (Bank of Canada Museum). South Africa made the same calculation at a more charged moment, replacing a colonial portrait with wildlife between 1992 and 1994. Costa Rica and Mexico use animals as a biodiversity statement, tying each denomination to a named biosphere reserve or ecosystem.

Which animals appear most often?

Within the 28 notes verified for this page, birds are the clear winner: 15 rows include one, counting Canada's seven, Australia's five, Mexico's royal eagle and chocolate heron, and Costa Rica's hummingbird. Mammals come second with 10 rows, from a rhinoceros to a gray whale. The last three are an amphibian, a butterfly reserve and a coral reef with a shark and a sea turtle. This ranking describes our sourced table only. No central bank publishes a global count of which species appear on the world's money, so treat any site that gives you one as an estimate.

The species table: every animal, note and year

Each of the 28 rows below was confirmed against the issuing central bank. Notes we could not verify against a primary source were left out rather than guessed at, which is why several famous wildlife series are missing.

Sources by row: the South African Reserve Bank for the Big Five; the Reserve Bank of Australia denomination pages for the birds and issue dates; the Bank of Canada Museum for the Birds of Canada series; Banco de México for the G type notes and their circulation dates; and the Banco Central de Costa Rica denomination pages for the colon series.

Which animals are on South African banknotes?

One of the Big Five on every denomination: the rhinoceros on the R10, the elephant on the R20, the lion on the R50, the Cape buffalo on the R100 and the leopard on the R200. Nelson Mandela's portrait is on the front of all five.

The South African Reserve Bank spells out the design logic in a single sentence: South African banknotes "can be differentiated from one another by considering the dominant colour, animal theme and size" (South African Reserve Bank). The animal is not decoration. It is one of three cues that tell you which note you are holding, which matters for anyone sorting cash by touch or at speed.

The upgraded series that followed kept the same five animals rather than replacing them, which is the point: the Big Five are now a fixed part of what a rand note is. One practical note for collectors of the older wildlife issues: the Reserve Bank states that it does not demonetize its currency, and that all banknotes it has issued remain legal tender at face value irrespective of issue date (South African Reserve Bank). For the full three-act history of the rand, see our South Africa banknotes hub.

Which birds are on Australian banknotes?

Every note in Australia's Next Generation series carries a different native bird along with a different species of wattle, both worked into the security features rather than printed as a main vignette.

The pairings are the eastern spinebill and prickly Moses wattle on the five dollar note, the sulphur-crested cockatoo and bramble wattle on the ten, the laughing kookaburra and box-leaf wattle on the twenty, the black swan and Acacia humifusa on the fifty, and the Australian masked owl with Acacia pycnantha, the golden wattle, on the hundred (Reserve Bank of Australia). The Reserve Bank even notes that the wattle flowers on the ten dollar note are paler than those on the five, matching the real plants.

The birds are not just pretty. In a series whose defining feature is a top to bottom clear window, a flying bird gives the window something to do, and the same series introduced a raised tactile feature so that people who are blind or have low vision can identify denominations by touch. More in our history of Australian banknotes and the Australia country page.

What was Canada's Birds of Canada series?

The Birds of Canada series, issued between April 1986 and June 1993, is a complete Bank of Canada series in which every denomination's reverse carries a bird. Seven notes, seven species, from a belted kingfisher on the five dollar note to a pine grosbeak on the thousand.

The series began as a security project. In the late 1970s, accurate color printing and color photocopiers were catching up with security printers, so the Bank of Canada started work on new defenses before it had even finished issuing the previous series. The Birds notes kept the traditional paper and printing features but added a reflective patch that shifted color when tilted while reading as a single dark color to a scanner, one of the first optical security devices on any banknote in the world. The word "Canada" in the sky behind each bird looked like a flat tint but was actually microprinted parallel lines that produced a moire pattern when scanned (Bank of Canada Museum).

The thousand dollar note has the best story. It was originally going to show a spruce grouse, but the bird's nickname, "fool hen", earned for its habit of freezing rather than fleeing from predators, was judged too awkward for the country's highest denomination. The pine grosbeak took its place. The series was also the first to address accessibility, with bolder colors, enlarged denominations and a hand-held audio device that identified each note, and it was the last to carry a Canadian thousand dollar bill, a two dollar bill or traditional guilloche patterns. See our Canada banknotes page for the wider series history.

Which animals are on Mexican and Costa Rican banknotes?

Mexico's G series pairs a historical theme on one side with a named UNESCO biosphere reserve and its signature animal on the other. Costa Rica does the same with ecosystems, putting a sloth, a shark, a monkey, a deer and a hummingbird across five polymer denominations.

Mexico's list reads like a field trip: a Mexican crocodile and a chocolate heron in the Sian Ka'an mangroves on the 20 pesos, an axolotl among the canals of Xochimilco on the 50, the temperate forest of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve on the 100, a royal eagle in the Pinacate desert on the 200, a gray whale and her calf in El Vizcaino on the 500, and a jaguar in the rainforest of Calakmul on the 1,000 (Banco de México). Every one of those places is a World Heritage site, which is the point.

Costa Rica's colon notes follow the same idea on polymer. The 1,000 shows tropical dry forest with a Guanacaste tree and a white-tailed deer; the 2,000 a coral reef with a shark and a hawksbill turtle; the 5,000 a mangrove with a white-faced monkey and a crocodile; the 10,000 rainforest with a sloth and an orchid; and the 20,000 highlands with a hummingbird and a forest rabbit (Banco Central de Costa Rica). Our Costa Rica banknotes page covers the polymer conversion, and Mexico banknotes covers the peso series.

Is the Zimbabwe Bird a real bird?

No, and that is why it is not in the species table above. The Zimbabwe Bird is a carved soapstone figure from the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, adopted as the national emblem, and on banknotes it appears as a watermark and an emblem rather than as a wildlife portrait.

The distinction matters if you collect by theme. A leopard on a South African note is a picture of a leopard. The Zimbabwe Bird on a Zimbabwean note is a picture of a sculpture, closer to a coat of arms than to a field guide. You will find it as the watermark on the 1994 to 1997 Chiremba Balancing Rocks series, the elegant pre-crisis paper that collectors call the bird-watermark dollars, and it carried through the later issues as the national emblem.

That series is the quiet favorite in a country better known for its record denominations. Our Zimbabwe banknotes hub maps every generation of the Zimbabwean dollar, from the bird-watermark notes through the bearer cheques to the trillion series and the gold-backed ZiG.

Are there animals on Scottish banknotes?

Scotland's banknotes do not come from a central bank, which is why they are harder to pin down than the rest of this page. Three commercial banks issue them, and each runs its own design program.

The Bank of England confirms the arrangement: only the Bank of England issues banknotes in England and Wales, but six banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland may also issue them. In Scotland those are Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and The Royal Bank of Scotland (Bank of England). The Royal Bank of Scotland's current polymer series is the one that pairs Scottish figures with Scottish nature, and the Bank of Canada Museum holds its 2017 ten pound note featuring the scientist Mary Somerville in the museum collection.

We have not listed the individual Scottish wildlife pairings in the species table because we could not confirm them against a page published by the issuing bank at the time of writing. Everything in that table is attributable to the authority that issues the note, and we would rather have 28 rows you can check than 40 you cannot. If you collect British paper money, our Great Britain banknotes page is the place to start.

How do you collect animal banknotes?

Animal notes are one of the cheapest themed collections to build and one of the most satisfying to display, because the designs are meant to be looked at rather than squinted at.

Three sets are worth building on their own. The South African Big Five is five notes and tells a political story as well as a zoological one. The Birds of Canada series is seven notes, all withdrawn, with a fixed supply and two denominations, the two and the thousand, that Canada no longer issues at all. Costa Rica's polymer wildlife family is five notes in five sizes and five colors, and looks superb in an album page.

Condition carries most of the value in modern wildlife notes, so read our banknote grading guide before you buy and consider certified examples for the withdrawn series. Browse the full range in the banknotes by country collection, or start with the Zimbabwe and South African material if you want story as well as design. New to the hobby? Our guide on how to collect world banknotes covers the first decisions.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.