“What…Am…I?”
~The National Animal of Bhutan
If you’re an independent nation, there’s a good chance you have a national animal of some sort. In fact, of all the official countries in the world, almost ¾ of them do. We don’t have a really good reason why that’s the case.
]In fact it’s kind of weird that a bunch of countries randomly decided to give themselves mascots without anyone questioning as to…what’s the point? We’re sure some country started doing it like thousands of years ago (honestly, probably China?) and a few other independently decided to go the same route, and eventually most countries just got peer pressured into it, but it’s kind of weird that we take national animals as just like, a normal thing for countries to have.
Now America has a few national animals, and we’re not alone in being countries that double down. Naturally we have the bald eagle, but did you know that we also named the American bison our “national mammal”?
Yeah that’s right, we have a national mammal. Now, that’s only been the case since it was signed into law in 2016, but still, we do now have two animals. And that being said, neither of these options are bad. Bald eagles are badass, and look badass, while bison have long played a historically significant role in many cultures throughout American history.
But as you might surmise, not every country can really lock in a good national animal like America. In fact, a lot of countries are represented by animals that are not only weird, they straight up don’t fucking exist. And not a single one of these fake animals is a warthog in an army uniform firing a bazooka, which is what we would have come up with if asked to make up a mythical creature to represent America.
You know the deal at this point. We found out that some countries are weird about an arbitrary thing, and we’re going to tell you all about the weirdness. And folks? There are a lot of official animals that straight up do not exist. So many that we’re going to split this sucker into two articles. Keep in mind, most of these creatures were invented about 300 years before we as a species really started getting good at “imagination” and it shows.
America Fun Fact of the Day 
ALDI: Revisited and Re-reviewed
“Jesus Christ, why do you all love Aldi so much?”
~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt
Three years ago, no, sorry, more than three years ago, we posted a little joke article on our jokey informative site. It was called, “ALDI Owns Trader Joe’s, Corners the Market on Cheap Food Knockoffs.” It was fine. It made a lot of jokes about ALDI being for poor people, because their stuff is super cheap, their products almost comically try to mimic the name and design of name brands, and if you’ve ever been to an ALDI that’s not in a kind of shitty neighborhood, well congratulations you live in New Hampshire, shut up. Oh, we said something like, “there are two kinds of people in this world, those that shop at ALDI, and those that have jobs.” Ha ha, a little joke, making fun of how cheap and cost-cutting ALDI is.
And holy shit, people got mad.
Like, really mad.
Like, fucking three years later, out of the fucking blue mad.
By the way, outside of Pete’s spelling of “8insurance” being absolutely hilarious, we love the email he listed in his “you must put an email to post a comment” section (yes, we can see what email you use, yes most of them are obviously fake, and a surprising amount of you go into making your fake email address specific to your comment, which, hey, kudos.) It was nycceo@yahoo.com. NYC CEO! That’s so perfect. That’s the funniest thing we’ve ever seen from someone trying to center their argument with a brick wall around the concept of “I am a CEO, and even I go to 8ALDI.” We had to email the address, just to make sure it was fake. No, seriously, we had to know.
Damn.
Anyway, the point being, we’ve gotten nearly a dozen comments, all angry, all insisting that ALDI is amazing, and that we’re wrongheaded bigots for daring to insult it. We’re close-minded in dismissing this righteous, German-owned chain of grocery stores. These billionaire owners of ALDI deserve better! They sell us fruit cups a dollar cheaper than Rite Aid! So it appears you sons of bitches want us to re-evaluate our stance on ALDI, because fucking everyone has way too strong of an opinion about that store. Fine. We’ll do you that favor. This is literally the first time we’ve had to revisit a topic, but we’re doing it for you, the social media managers of ALDI the fans.
ALDI: Revisited and Re-reviewed
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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, The Rest of Them
Tagged ALDI, America, Angry Comments, Germany, Millville, Trader Joe's