Animal emoji to copy and paste

Last checked October 30, 2026 by the TextEditor.com team

When each animal emoji was added

The first animal emoji became part of Unicode in 2010. New ones have come almost every year since. The newest is the monarch butterfly 🫌, added in Emoji 18.0 in 2026.

The dates follow the official Emoji version of each animal. A few, like the cow 🐄 and the mouse 🐁, were already Unicode characters in 2010. Unicode counted them as emoji in 2015.

Phones and computers add new emoji with system updates, usually months after Unicode releases them. Read more about where emoji came from and why some show as a box.

What some animal emoji mean

A few animal emoji have picked up a second meaning online.

• 🐐goat
  GoatPeople say "GOAT", the greatest of all time. You will see 🐐 next to a star athlete or a friend who did something great.
• 🐍snake
  SnakeA person you can't trust. Someone who acts friendly, then talks behind your back.
• 🦋butterfly
  ButterflyChange and a fresh start, since a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Also used for a nervous, fluttery feeling.
• 🐸frog☕hot beverage
  Frog and teaFrom a meme of Kermit the Frog sipping tea with the line "But that's none of my business." It means "I'm just saying".
• 🙈see-no-evil monkey🙉hear-no-evil monkey🙊speak-no-evil monkey
  Three monkeysSee no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Online, 🙈 often means "oops, I can't look" and 🙊 means "I said too much".
• 🦄unicorn
  UnicornSomething rare or one of a kind. Young companies worth over a billion dollars are also called unicorns.

The three monkeys come from an old Japanese saying. A famous wood carving of them is on the sacred stable at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan.

Why some animals have two emoji

Many animals have a head emoji and a full body emoji. The heads came first. They were part of the emoji sets on Japanese phones, and Unicode added them in 2010. Most full body animals came a few years later.

Use the head when you mean a feeling or a cute reaction. Use the full body when the animal does something, like a dog 🐕 out for a walk.

The cat faces 😺 to 😾 are different again. They show feelings, just like smileys. Unicode files them with the smileys, so you also find them on the face emoji page. For cute animal faces made from text, like ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ, try the animal text faces.

How new animals get added

Anyone can send Unicode a proposal for a new emoji. The proposal has to show that many people would use it, for example with search numbers. Unicode's emoji subcommittee reviews the proposals, and only a few are accepted each year.

After that, Apple, Google, Microsoft and others draw their own picture of the new emoji. It reaches your phone with a system update. That is why a new animal can look different on each device.

How emoji proposals work

More animals to copy

• Plants and weather🌸 🌻 🌵 🍁 🌈Flowers, trees, sun, rain and stars.
• Animal facesʕ•ᴥ•ʔBears, cats, dogs and fish.
• Cat drawings(=^･ω･^=)Cats in ASCII art, from one line to big scenes.
• Add emoji to a sentencemy dog 🐶 and cat 🐱The emoji translator puts an emoji after each matching word.