PETS AND ANIMALS

Elephants, stags, tortoises, sloths and crocodiles are all creatures you might expect to find in a zoo. They have also been given to the Royal Family as gifts over the years.

Some of the animals associated with the Royal Family are quite common. The Queen is famous for having many dogs. Most famous are her corgis. Her Majesty owns five corgis and four dorgis (corgi cross daschund).

The dogs go many places with The Queen. They are often at Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral, as well as Buckingham Palace. They even accompanied The Queen to receptions she gave for the New Zealand All Blacks and the England rugby teams at Buckingham Palace!

The Queen also loves riding. There are many horses kept by the Royal Mews. These are needed to pull the carriages which The Queen and other Members of the Royal Family use and the carriages used to carry ambassadors and other important people. The Queen often rides these horses herself in Windsor Great Park. 

The Princess Royal is a talented horse rider too. She represented Great Britain at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and won BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 1971.

Aside from horses and dogs though, there are some unusual animals that have been given to the Royal Family.

Visitors to London zoo in the nineteenth century would have been amazed to see a hippopotamus which had been given to Queen Victoria, while in the Buckingham Palace schoolroom and nursery in the 1950s, you might have seen two birds in red, green and blue, named Annie and Davy, which were given to Prince Charles and Princess Anne.

The Duke of Edinburgh was given two pygmy hippopotami by President Tubman of Liberia, following a State Visit to Britain in 1961. Five years earlier, Princess Anne had been given a bear. The bear was called Nikki, and he was three months old. He was given to The Princess by the leaders of the Soviet Union at the time: Bulganin and Krushchev. Nikki actually went to live at Regents Park zoo as the 10 year old Princess could not be expected to look after the bear herself! Nikki eventually fathered four cubs called Edward, Ursula, Bustle and Zooki. Their mother was called Winnie.

Goldie the Stag was presented to Prince Charles in 1957. He came from Rapperswill in Switzerland and was kept at the Zoological Gardens. He died in 1965. Prince Charles also had a rabbit when he was a little boy. The rabbit's name was Harvey and he lived at Buckingham Palace, before living in the stables at Windsor Castle.

Prince Edward was given a crocodile when he was only one year old! The crocodile's name was Mansa, which means 'King' in Mandigo. The gift came about following The Queen's visit to a village in Gambia in 1961.

One of the most famous gifts ever presented to the Royal Family was 'Jumbo' the elephant.  He was presented to The Queen to mark her silver wedding anniversary. 'Jumbo' was a 7 year old bull elephant and first lived at the Children's zoo in Crystal Palace, before moving to Regent's Park and finally Whipsnade. After all, Buckingham Palace is big, but not that big!

THINGS TO SEE AND DO

You can come and visit the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace. This is where the horses used to pull royal carriages are kept in stables. At the State Opening of Parliament or on great ceremonial occasions, you can see the horses pulling the carriages.

Which of the above animals would you like to receive?  If you had to give an animal to a member of the Royal Family, which animal would you give them? You can colour in one of The Queen's corgis on this website by selecting 'Paint' at the bottom of the page. If you had a corgi, what would you call it?