Thomas Jefferson kept grizzly bears at the White House.

  • Two grizzly bear cubs
Two grizzly bear cubs
Credit: jared lloyd/ Moment via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine

December 23, 2025

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The most common presidential pets have historically been cats and dogs, but the White House has also been home to considerably more exotic creatures. Calvin Coolidge alone had raccoons, a donkey, and a bobcat; Martin Van Buren was gifted a pair of tiger cubs (though they were confiscated by Congress and sent to the zoo); and Theodore Roosevelt had a badger named Josiah and a hyena named Bill, among many other animals. Most fearsome of all the presidential pets, perhaps, were the two grizzly bears Thomas Jefferson received from an American explorer named Zebulon Pike in 1807.

The two cubs didn’t call the White House home for long, alas. Jefferson realized that housing them on the grounds would be impractical, writing in a letter to his daughter, “These are too dangerous & troublesome for me to keep.” He knew just who to send them to: Charles Willson Peale, an artist who had a museum in Philadelphia. In a letter to his friend, Jefferson assured him that the cubs were “perfectly gentle” and “appear quite good humored” in addition to not eating much. Before sending them on their way, the nation’s third president briefly kept the bears on the White House lawn.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

An annual competition crowns the fattest bear of the year.

2025 was an eventful year for a lot of reasons, few more uplifting than the underdog story of Chunk, the year’s fattest bear. After two consecutive years as runner-up, the 1,200-pound brown bear finally won Fat Bear Week, an annual competition devoted to ursines who “best exemplify fatness and success.” 

Brown bears pack on the pounds before hibernating in the winter, and the public gets to vote in a single-elimination contest to crown a winner. Bear 32, known as Chunk, had lost twice in a row to bear 128, Grazer, the first female back-to-back winner since the competition began in 2014. It has since turned into an autumnal highlight, with this year’s final-round matchup between Chunk and bear 856 (who has no official name) garnering more than 160,000 votes.

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