Weird & Wonderful Pets From History - Fun Facts For Kids
Updated: Feb 13
April is National Pet month in the UK and to celebrate, we’ve put together a list of famous pets from history. From the bizarre to the brave, the outlandish to the alarming, the faithful to the ferocious, we’ve got everything in this list of history’s best and most treasured domesticated creatures.
Scrub-A-Dub-Dub, Alligators In The Tub:
John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States of America between 1825 and 1829. He famously received a number of exciting gifts from Marquis de Lafayette, a French military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War. Amongst these gifts was a pet alligator!
President Quincy Adams is said to have kept the alligator in a bathroom in the White House for a time. Why? Well, it was probably the safest place to house the alligator so it didn’t nibble on anyone. But the president claimed he kept it there so he could scare his guests with it!
Who Says Cats Hate Water?:
This black and white feline, originally called Oscar, had his name changed to “Unsinkable Sam”. Why? He survived the sinking of not one, not two, but three ships during World War 2!
The three ships all sank within the same year (talk about rotten luck!). The German battleship Bismarck sank in May 1941, the British destroyer Cossack sank in October 1941 and British Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal sank in November 1941.
And the most impressive part of the story? Unsinkable Sam survived the demise of all three ships without a single injury. Though I bet he was pretty grumpy about the whole thing. Especially as it must have left him with just six lives left out of his original nine.
Hot On His ‘Eels:
Lucius Licinius Crassus (try saying that name 5 times fast!) was a Roman lawyer and politician. And like many of those featured on this list, he had a liking for unusual pets. Crassus liked eels. In fact, he didn’t just like them, he LOVED them. Crassus is said to have kept a pet eel in a fish pond and would occasionally decorate the eel with necklaces and earrings.
Crassus was so distraught when his pet eel died that he held a funeral service for the deceased fish. And for those of you who were wondering (I was), an eel is a fish, not some sort of creepy swimming snake. Who knew? I also learned that electric eels aren’t actually considered to be a real type of eel (how eel-itist! Get it? Elitist? Eel-itist? Okay, nevermind).
What’s really mind-blowing is that Crassus wasn’t the only Roman to own a pet eel! Although he was probably the only one to adorn his eel with jewellery.
Put that Lobster on a Leash:
Gérard de Nerval was a French Romantic poet and writer who lived in the 1800s. He gained a reputation as a bit of an eccentric when he started walking his pet around the Palais Royal Gardens, a public park in Paris, on a blue silk leash.
But it wasn’t the colour and material of the animal’s leash that drew attention from the people of Paris. Instead, it was the animal itself. You see, Gérard didn’t walk a dog on a leash through the park – he walked his pet lobster, called Thibault! He claimed the lobster made a better pet than a dog because it didn’t bark. What an unusual sight that would have been!
They “Bearly” Made It:
As an adult, Lord Byron may have been best known for his poetry and the many scandalous love affairs that seemed to follow him around. But in his younger years, he was better known for a different sort of scandal that accompanied him everywhere – his pet bear.
When Byron attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1805, he was told that pet dogs and cats were banned by the college. In protest of these old-fashioned rules, Byron bought himself a pet bear, claiming there was nothing in the college rules stopping him from having the bear. And he was right. Equally, there was nothing in the college rules stopping him from having a pet mouse, or a pet rabbit, or a pet parrot either, but Byron wasn’t one for doing things by halves!
