Why are lions so popular in European heraldry if they don’t live in Europe?

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For example, there are lions on the coat of arms of Britain or Norway, but there are no lions there.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

In a lot of countries, it’s BECAUSE those animals don’t live there. A king wages a war and gets an exotic animal as a spoil of war, or gets it gifted as a tribute and then proceeds to put it in his coat of arms…

My city, e.g., has a camel on its coat of arms, because we once stole it from an army that was besieging us at the time.

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