Animal Ink

The World's Most Popular Animal Tattoos

Animal tattoos have become a phenomenon in the last decade or so, particularly for those animal lovers who want to show their love for their favorite animal. Animal portrait tattoos can be a beautiful memory of our pets that have passed, while tattoos of spirit animals are loaded with meaning and symbolism.

Instagram has become the go-to platform to show off your pets, whether it's a funny video of your cat up to no good, or your pet bird showcasing their vocabulary prowess. It has also become a hugely popular app to show off animal tattoos.

With the people of the world having their favorite animals, you may want to know if yours are up there with the most popular tattoos in the world.

And before we begin, especially for you cat owners, make sure you check our cat food reviews and best cat insurance ranking.

The 5 Most Popular Animal Tattoos in the World

Key

Total Global Searches Instagram Hastags
1

Butterfly

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@harryStyles

6,672,000

5,472,000

1,200,000

2

Snake

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@kat_ink_a

3,737,000

2,637,000

1,100,000

3

Lion

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@teddysphotos

3,666,000

2,466,000

1,200,000

4

Wolf

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@consciousartstattoos

3,341,000

2,349,000

992,000

5

Tiger

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@tattooist_dh

2,410,000

1,495,000

915,000

Annual Search Volume

Rank

Tattoo

United States

Global

Instagram Hashtags

Combined Global Searches & Tags

Similar to the global searches, the USA’s favorite animal tattoo is the butterfly, followed by the snake, lion, wolf, and tiger. We’re happy to see that cat tattoos are in seventh place.

Cat tattoos have a huge 825,000 posts on Instagram, meaning they’re up there with the world's favorite animals. Cats represent resilience, that is why people believe cats have nine lives. Most people get tattoos of cat paws, because of their significance for life after death and luck during life.

Methodology

We used Google Keyword Planner to find the total number of yearly searches for animal tattoos - from June 2021 to July 2022, both globally and in the U.S. The results are accurate as of 08/06/2022.

Secondly, we used Instagram to look at the number of hashtags for each animal tattoo, such as ‘#snaketattoo’.

We also used listicle articles to find the meaning behind the animal tattoos, like this one from TatRing on snake tattoo history.