World leaders and the animals in their lives

When Joe Biden formally enters The White House as the 46th President of the United States, he will, of course, be bringing the family along too.

And that means a new home for his German shepherd dogs - Major and Champ. They are the first dogs to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since Sunny and Bo, the dogs owned by President Barack Obama’s family. Mr Obama's successor, Donald Trump, didn't have any pets during his presidency.

Major is a rescue dog, joining a small list of pets coming to the White House via that route. President Lyndon B Johnson’s daughter Luci adopted an abandoned puppy, and Bill Clinton’s cat Socks was an adopted stray.

They’re not the only world leaders who have had animals in their lives. Many prominent figureheads had pets they doted on, and sometimes they were presented with the most exotic of creatures as gifts from visitors. From house cats to polar bears, these are just some examples.

The Pope’s elephant

In 1962, the skeleton of an elephant was discovered beneath a courtyard in the Vatican during maintenance work.

While it sounds like the beginning of an intriguing movie plot, the identity of the creature was easily explained. It was Hanno, an elephant presented to Pope Leo X in the 16th Century. The gift came from Manuel I, the king of Portugal, who was keen to expand his trading routes and believed having the Vatican on side would be beneficial to his plans.

Presenting an elephant as a gift certainly caught the attention of both the Pope and the public in Rome. Draped in colourful fabric and with a silver tower on its back, there was even choreography involved in his arrival. Hanno dropped to his knees on meeting the Pope, trumpeted three times, then sprayed water on everyone there - including the Pope. Fortunately, the Pope thought this was charming and he took Hanno to his heart very quickly.

Pope Leo later wrote to King Manuel: “The sight of this quadruped provides us with the greatest amusement and has become for our people an object of extraordinary wonder.”

Hanno only survived in Rome for another two years but Pope Leo made sure he wasn’t forgotten. He wrote an epitaph for his elephant friend, and had the artist Raphael paint a special fresco of him.

King Henry III’s elephant (and polar bear)

Henry III was on the throne from 1216 to 1272, becoming king when he was just nine years old.

He became known for the building work which took place in his reign, including an extension to the Tower of London which became the home of the royal menagerie (a collection of animals kept in captivity for people to look at).

Among the animals in there was an elephant, sent to Henry by King Louis IX of France. It was the first elephant ever to be seen in England. It wasn’t the only exotic creature in his collection. King Haakon IV of Norway sent Henry a polar bear, which was allowed to fish for its food in the Thames, under supervision from a keeper. The keeper was ordered to keep the bear on a chain and muzzle as it made the journey between the river and the Tower, and spotting it on its journey became something of a local attraction.

The president's parrot

Pet birds have been a common sight at The White House over the centuries, but it is more than 50 years since the last feathered residents - a pair of lovebirds belonging to President Johnson.

One of the more memorable clawed companions on Pennsylvania Avenue was Poll, an African grey parrot that was originally a gift for President Andrew Jackson's wife. Jackson served from 1829 to 1837, and when he died in 1845, Poll was still alive.

The story goes that Poll attended the President’s funeral, which was was presided over by Reverend William Menefee Norment. He was later reported to have said that a "wicked" parrot had been so excited by all the activity from the crowd before the service, it began to swear, loudly and often. In the end, the parrot had to be removed from the proceedings.

Naughty, Poll. Naughty.

Sir Winston Churchill's love of animals

Britain’s wartime prime minister may be associated with a bulldog spirit, but he was such an animal lover that his furry and feathered family included all sorts of creatures, including a budgerigar and pigs. He was even involved in an ultimately unsuccessful plan to transport a platypus from Australia to London Zoo, to boost relations between the countries.

After Churchill died in 1965, his family estate Chartwell went into the care of the National Trust. To this day, the staff continue to honour Churchill’s request regarding another pet. He had a beloved cat, Jock, who often travelled between the family’s home in London and the estate. Churchill asked that a cat, called Jock, with white paws and a white bib, should always live on the premises. Jock VII, a six-month-old rescue cat, joined the household in May 2020 and is described as “a mischievous character” on the estate’s official website.

Theodore Roosevelt’s White House ‘zoo’

The 26th President of the United States served from 1901 to 1909 and during his eight years in office, the White House became home to his wife, his six children and one of its most exotic collection of animals on record.

To begin with, there was Emily Spinach. Emily was a garter snake, common to the United States and Canada and generally considered harmless. She got her name from Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, who said the snake was: “as green as spinach and as thin as my Aunt Emily.”

There was no chance of Emily ever getting lonely. She joined a large collection of animals on Pennsylvania Avenue that included Jonathan Edwards (not the Olympic triple jumper, but a small bear that eventually moved to a zoo), a laughing hyena called Bill and a one-legged rooster.

The New York Times reported that Bill the hyena arrived as a puppy, a gift from Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia in 1904. It was later documented that Roosevelt became fond of Bill and taught him a few tricks, before Bill also went to live in a zoo.

Arguably, the White House could have opened a zoo all of its own during Roosevelt’s administration. Eli Yale the macaw, Josiah the badger, Mame the pig and a pair of ponies called Alonquin and General Grant could also be added to the list of residents, and there were plenty of others that could be mentioned too!

Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis and dorgis

In 1933, the Duke of York brought a corgi from the local dog kennels as a family pet to be enjoyed by his two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Three years later, the Duke of York unexpectedly became King George VI following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII. Elizabeth, the elder of his daughters, was now next in line to the throne.

Elizabeth would eventually become queen, and the little dogs introduced to the family 20 years before her coronation became a mainstay in her life.

In the near 69 years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, she has had more than 30 corgis as pets. Two of them, Holly and Willow appeared with her in the film for the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, where James Bond (actor Daniel Craig) collected Her Majesty from Buckingham Palace to transport her to the stadium by helicopter.

As well as corgis, Queen Elizabeth has also introduced a new breed of dog, the dorgi, to the world. This happened when one of her corgis bred with Princess Margaret’s pet dachshund Pipkin. There have been more than 10 dorgis in the family so far, with names including Pickles, Chipper, Piper and Candy.

Just like Henry III, Queen Elizabeth II has been offered other animals as gifts during her reign. This includes the pair of tortoises she received in the Seychelles in 1972 and the President of Cameroon’s gift of a bull elephant called Jumbo. They were all gifted to London Zoo with Jumbo eventually moving to Whipsnade. Not every animal presented to Her Majesty comes back to the UK. In 1974, the people of Vanuatu gave her a pig, which remained there, and the bull given to her in South Africa in 1995 also stayed on its own soil.

This article was published in January 2021