What Animal Are You? Animal Totems, Personality and an Honest Test
Your personality animal: far more than a symbol
For millennia, people have tried to understand themselves through animals. Many cultures have linked human character traits to animal behaviour, and the fascination crosses continents and centuries.
It has not gone away. "What animal matches my personality?" is still a popular question, and behind it sits a universal need: to know yourself.
This article separates the strands: what is symbolic, what Jung actually wrote, and what science has measured.
The history of animal-personality connections
Where the word "totem" comes from
"Totem" comes from Ojibwe, an Algonquian language of North America, where it refers to a kinship bond. Among the Ojibwe, clans were named after animals, and clan membership shaped social life.
The personal "totem animal" as people use the phrase today is a much more recent idea, born of popular culture rather than of those traditions.
Associations around the world
Almost every culture ties human qualities to animals, in proverbs, stories and crafts:
- The lion: courage, authority
- The cat: independence, observation
- The eagle: vision, ambition
- The dog: loyalty, attachment
Morocco is no exception: animals run through its proverbs and popular culture. These associations are cultural and symbolic; they do not describe how the species actually behave.
Carl Jung and the psychology of archetypes
In the early twentieth century, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung changed how we think about symbols.
The collective unconscious
Jung proposed that humans share a collective unconscious, a layer of the psyche made of recurring images and patterns he called archetypes: the Hero, the Great Mother, the Shadow, the Wise Old Man. These figures recur in the myths of many cultures.
And animals?
Animals play a large part in the dreams and symbols Jung and his successors studied, often as images of instinct. But Jung did not propose a method for finding a personal "totem animal" that reveals someone's personality. That idea belongs mostly to popular culture.
Individuation
Jung called individuation the process of integrating the different parts of one's personality to become fully oneself. It is a central concept in his psychology, not a theory of animals.
What science has actually measured
Animals have personalities
A review of 19 studies across 12 species found that some dimensions of human personality appear in animals: extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness generalise best, followed by openness. A separate conscientiousness dimension appeared only in chimpanzees, our closest relatives.[1]
Each species also has its own validated dimensions. In cats, the "Feline Five" covers neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, impulsiveness and agreeableness, with no openness or conscientiousness.[2]
Do people and their animals resemble each other?
For dogs, partly: in a study in Austria and Hungary, owners and their dogs had similar personalities on all five major traits, and the similarity held for four of them when an independent person rated the dog.[3]
Is it better to be alike or different?
Nobody knows yet. A 2023 review leaned towards complementarity on some traits.[4] In 2026, the same team found satisfaction was highest when human and dog were alike, in working-dog teams.[5] The question is open, and no study has settled it for reptiles, birds or other animals.
The Pettopia test: a profile, not a totem animal
Pettopia's personality test does not hand you a totem animal. It measures your personality with 20 statements from the Mini-IPIP, a published, public-domain questionnaire[6], rewritten in plain words. Three traits then decide your profile out of eight: your social energy, your attention to others and your organisation.
| Profile | In one line |
|---|---|
| The Anchor | Present, attentive, and things get done. |
| The Companion | Warm, spontaneous, always around. |
| The Captain | Decides fast, holds the line. |
| The Adventurer | Says yes first, plans after. |
| The Guardian | Calm, steady, forgets nothing. |
| The Haven | Gentle, patient, never rushed. |
| The Architect | Precise, methodical, quiet. |
| The Observer | Watches, chooses rarely, chooses well. |
Each profile says what your personality changes in life with an animal: how regular the care is, your patience, how closely you watch the signs it shows. It does not say which animal to get.
Choosing an animal is a different question
Research shows personality predicts very poorly which species suits someone. The three animals the test suggests therefore come from five questions about your life: your home, how long the animal would be alone, how much you go out, and your experience. A fixed calculation picks them and gives their reasons; the same answers always give the same animals.
The test does not promise the perfect animal and shows no percentage. Your answers stay on your phone: the calculation runs there. To look at your daily life in detail before adopting, the Matcher asks other questions and can answer that no animal fits for now.
Find your profile
Introspection has a limit: you risk choosing the animal you would like to be. A published questionnaire gives a more structured view, to read as a portrait, not a verdict.
Take the personality test: 20 statements, 5 questions about your life, your profile out of eight and three animals for your life. For the research behind these choices, read the science behind the test.
References
[1] Gosling, S. D., & John, O. P. (1999). "Personality Dimensions in Nonhuman Animals: A Cross-Species Review." Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(3), 69-75. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00017
[2] Litchfield, C. A., Quinton, G., Tindle, H., Chiera, B., Kikillus, K. H., & Roetman, P. (2017). "The 'Feline Five': An exploration of personality in pet cats (Felis catus)." PLOS ONE, 12(8), e0183455. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183455
[3] Turcsán, B., Range, F., Virányi, Z., Miklósi, Á., & Kubinyi, E. (2012). "Birds of a feather flock together? Perceived personality matching in owner-dog dyads." Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 140(3-4), 154-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2012.06.004
[4] Bender, Y., Bräuer, J., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2023). "What makes a good dog-owner team? A systematic review about compatibility in personality and attachment." Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 260, 105857. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2023.105857
[5] Bender, Y., Altschul, D., Henschel, M., Jandke, L., Schweinberger, S. R., & Bräuer, J. (2026). "Perfect match: Understanding personality based compatibility in dog-owner dyads." Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 100196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crbeha.2025.100196
[6] Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). "The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality." Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192-203. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.18.2.192
