Scotland’s most famous creature is arguably Nessy the Loch Ness Monster, but the region’s national animal might just top that: a unicorn.
According to Elyse Waters, a historian looking into Scotland unicorns, it all goes back to the 1300s. She found that the unicorn was believed to be the lion’s worst enemy. Lions were the animals that English royalty stood behind (The same English that the Scots disagreed with). Unicorns also had power to dominate, but they used that power to protect other animals.
Scotsmen were so fond of unicorns that, in the late 1300s, King Robert took on the unicorn as Scotland’s national animal. There was just one problem. Unicorns were proven to not be real in 1825 by the scientist Baron George Covier.
But animal facts be damned. The unicorn remains Scotland’s national animal.
