If you’ve seen cartoon elephants before, you’ve likely noticed the stereotype that elephants fear mice. Given that they’re the largest land mammal on earth, it does seem unbelievable for ...

If you’ve seen cartoon elephants before, you’ve likely noticed the stereotype that elephants fear mice. Given that they’re the largest land mammal on earth, it does seem unbelievable for ...

The donkey and elephant first appeared in the mid-19th century, and were popularized by Thomas Nast, a cartoonist working for Harper’s Magazine from 1862-1886.

The elephant first was connected to Republicans in an 1860 issue of Railsplitter, but it became indelibly linked to the party in a cartoon by Nast in Harper's Weekly in 1874.

In March of 1877, after Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’ controversial victory, a Nast cartoon showed an injured elephant (“Republican Party”) kneeling at a tombstone labeled “Democratic ...