Animals Facts

In 1943, Polish soldiers in Iran bought a bear cub from a young boy, bottle-fed him on condensed milk, named him Wojtek, and enrolled him in the army. At Monte Cassino in 1944, he carried 100-lb artillery shells to the guns without dropping one. The 22nd Artillery Supply Company still uses a bear carrying a shell as its official emblem.

A homing pigeon shot through the breast with one leg hanging by a tendon flew 25 miles to save 194 men trapped behind enemy lines. The survivors carved him a wooden leg. He still stands at the Smithsonian today.

A stray puppy was smuggled onto a troopship in a coal bin in 1917. He served 18 months in the WWI trenches, warned his regiment of mustard gas attacks, located wounded men in No Man's Land, and bit a German spy's leg until soldiers arrived. He is the most decorated war dog of WWI and the only dog promoted to sergeant through combat. His body is at the Smithsonian.

When the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, a Halifax police dog named Trakr and his handler drove 15 hours from Nova Scotia to help. Buried under 30 feet of unstable rubble, Trakr found Genelle Guzman-McMillan - a Port Authority worker trapped for 27 hours and the last of the 20 live survivors pulled from the debris. Seven years later, a contest chose Trakr as the world's most "clone-worthy" dog. He died before the results arrived. In June 2009, five cloned puppies - Trustt, Solace, Valor, Prodigy, and Deja Vu - were delivered to his handler.

A 4-pound Yorkshire Terrier named Smoky was the smallest soldier in the Pacific during WWII. At Lingayen Gulf, engineers needed telephone wire threaded through a 70-foot pipe buried under an active airfield - too narrow for any person to enter. Smoky crawled through in minutes, saving an estimated 250 ground crew from three days of digging in open enemy fire, with 40 planes parked nearby.

Four months before England hosted the 1966 World Cup, the Jules Rimet Trophy was taken from a London exhibition. A week later, a mongrel named Pickles sniffed out a newspaper-wrapped package in a south London hedge - and returned the trophy to the nation. Corbett collected a £6,000 reward. Pickles got invited to the victory banquet.

Two young Australians bought a lion cub from Harrods for 250 guineas in 1969 and raised him in a Chelsea furniture shop. When he grew too big for city life, they released him into the wild in Kenya. A year later, they flew back to find him. They were warned he might not remember. Christian recognized them and sprinted to embrace them.

The horse behind DreamWorks' 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was a real Kiger mustang named Donner. Animators brought him to the studio and spent months watching how his muscles moved and his face changed with his mood. After the film, DreamWorks donated him to a wild horse sanctuary in California, where he was renamed Spirit. He turned 31 on May 8, 2026 - and fans still visit him.