Animals on Road Signs

I have decided to take a short hiatus from the "Five Islands" series of blogs. They will carry on, but I got a bit bogged down in Africa, mainly due to the lack of information about some of the islands, or lack of pictures. It won't be a long break, just time to reconnect my thoughts and maybe do a little more research from different angles. I will get around to finishing Africa, then moving onto Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, but they may be interspersed with random blogs about random things. Hence this blog !

Whilst travelling around for my work, I have noticed many different road signs. And, I have also noticed that some of these have animals on them. I don't mean the pigeon perched atop the sign post or the snail slowly crawling it's merry way across the surface. No, I'm talking about the features upon them.

These three creatures, with a few design variations, appear almost everywhere and symbolise, from left to right, Cattle (or domesticated farm animals in general), Horses used in equestrian activities, and wild animals (not just deer).

But around the United Kingdom, and around the world, there are also many different animals on signs that are specific to certain countries, landscapes or situations. Most are official, but some are locally sourced for individual circumstances. In this blog I shall explore some of these variations.

There are two main types of warning signs used around the world, the triangular red and white ones you see here, or the yellow diamond shaped signs you shall see later.

Being a nation of animal lovers, the UK has more of these signs than most countries, or so it seems. There are signs near lakes, in forests and also cities. Some are quite specific in their nature, whilst others are less so.

There are also tourist information signs that may show an animal such as safari parks and zoos. In the UK these usually feature the same animal whether the zoo in question has an example of that creature or not....

I have lumped together Scandinavia, Russia, Canada and parts of the USA mainly because the road signs with animals in these areas are all similar and feature the same animals with a few exceptions as you will see. Firstly all of these nations have Taiga and Tundra landscapes with wildlife specific to those regions.

There does seem to be a little confusion as to which animal to depict on some signs ,with Elk, Moose, Reindeer and Caribou designs being seemingly interchangable with the description given on each countries entry on Wikipedia, I suppose the general gist is that big animals may cross the road and damage your vehicle.

Canada has a few specific signs for particular members of the animal kingdom, most notably the ones depicted below, all from Canada.

One northern (or cold) country I haven't mentioned yet is Iceland. As well as the "Sheep" and "Reindeer" signs you would expect there are a couple of others. These are from Iceland's extensive range of official informational road signs depicting everything from waste disposal points to turning areas for commercial vehicles. The fishing sign is used in some other countries albeit with various designs.

Australia and New Zealand are known by some as the "Antipodes" in the UK. Hence my usage of the name. For the sake of clarity, I should state that the term Antipodes could be used for any part of the globe, in that it refers to the area diametrically opposite any point on earth. For example, a resident of New Zealand could refer to Europe as the Antipodes. Hope that clears up any confusion, yeah I know, clear as mud, right?

Back to the animals now. As you may expect, with their wide ranges of unusual flora and fauna, Australia and New Zealand have a plethora of unique signs.

Firstly, Australia. See captions below each picture for description.

As you can see, a unique (apart from the camel) set of signs. But wait til you see New Zealand's offering. Again, Captions below each picture.

There's a couple of strange ones you may have noticed in the New Zealand section. Pukeko and Kereru. No, I didn't know either so I looked them up. Heres a real life picture of each...

You would think that a continent as diverse as Africa would have a cornucopia of signs. It may do, but they either aren't published or the majority aren't official. Or they are just not on Wikipedia. There are some however and these are included below, along with signs from South America and Asia.

Moving away from Asia, the only country I have found that has any unique signs is Botswana. Once again, see the description below each picture...

And finally to South America. The only country with anything of interest in this blog is Colombia. I am disappointed that I couldn't find a picture of a sign with a Llama or Alpaca on it.

I think you will agree that these are a fine collection of signs depicting animals from around the world. But this isn't quite the end. There are of course unofficial signs, erected by locals to warn others. We all know about the "Beware of the Dog" signs folk put on the edge of their property to deter undesireables, but others put up signs out of compassion for the wild animals in the area. Here are a couple of unofficial signs....

So that's it. I would have liked to include some others that I know about. There are red squirrel signs in some parts of England and Scotland, there are "Beware of Alligator" signs all around the Everglades, and I'm certain there are weird and wonderful signs dotted in the most remote areas of the globe. There are also a couple of my own photos on my computer but, despite trying I can't seem to get them to upload. I shall try again in a day or so.

If you know of any other examples, please let me know in the comments. Better still if you know of any I can legally use on JetPunk without incurring the wrath of the Quizmaster or the people that protect copyright legislation then again, let me know in the comments and I'll add an update.

Until the next time fellow bloggers and JetPunkers......

I shall post below any more animal signs I find. This will save having to rewrite the blog each time. There will be a description and comment beneath each picture.