by Amy Taylor

Created on: January 16, 2009   Last Updated: January 27, 2009

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! With all the hoopla over the Obamas' choice for first dog and the fact that the last 18 presidents all owned dogs it may seem as if our presidents lack imagination when it comes to choosing the family pet...not so! American presidential history is rife with exotic pets such as mockingbirds, alligators, badgers and even silkworms. In fact, only two presidents, Chester Arthur and Andrew Johnson, did not have any pets, although Johnson did feed the white mice that he found in his bedroom.

While Teddy Roosevelt is most well-known for his choice in unusual first pets which included a macaw, a piebald rat, a badger and a one-legged rooster, Calvin Coolidge definitely wins the Weirdest Presidential Pets title. His menagerie included his two beloved raccoons, Rebecca and Horace, a bobcat, two lion cubs, a pygmy hippo, a wallaby, a Duiker which is a small antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa and a black bear. Other oddities in the White house include Woodrow Wilson's ram, James Buchanan's eagle, the alligators and silkworms owned by John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison's opossums.

The only thing that could possibly upstage the strange types of animals found at the White House would be the strange names our presidents have attached to them. For instance, George Washington named his coonhounds Drunkard, Taster, Tipler and Tipsy. Coolidge's lion cubs were named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau and Lyndon B. Johnson's beagles were known as Him and Her. The horse Ulysses S. Grant rode during the Civil War was named Jeff Davis, as in the President of the Confederate States, an interesting choice for the preeminent Union general.

However, over the course of our country's history dogs still rule the White House both in sheer numbers, almost 100, and in variety of breeds, nearly 40. Presidents have owned everything from cocker spaniels (Hayes, Truman, Kennedy) to greyhounds (Tyler, Hayes, Wilson) to bulldogs (Coolidge) so no matter what breed the Obamas choose or what they decide to name him/her, their first dog will join a long and proud list of presidential pets, exotic and ordinary.

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