Which of the following is the state animal of Bihar?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Bull. But read that option the way the Commission itself reads it, because the printed word is loose and the animal has a proper name. Bihar's officially designated state animal is the GAUR, Bos gaurus, commonly called the Indian bison. Disposing of candidate objections to this very question on 31 October 2025, BPSC recorded that 'Bull' here means the wild ox — the male gaur — and that the official name is Gaur. So the key stands at (b), and nothing in the paper points to a domestic bull or a plough ox; every published list of Indian state animals prints Bihar : Gaur, and that is how you should carry it into the next exam. The gaur is the largest living bovid on earth: head-and-body length 250–330 cm, a tail of 70–105 cm and a shoulder height of 142–220 cm, averaging about 188 cm in males and 168 cm in females, with males roughly one-fourth larger and heavier than females. It is unmistakable in the field — a high convex ridge on the forehead between the horns, a pronounced dorsal ridge that can leave the shoulders 12 cm higher than the rump, a heavy dewlap on throat and chest, and pale white or tan 'stockings' on the lower legs. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, is on CITES Appendix I, and carries Schedule I protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 — the same absolute bar on hunting that protects the tiger. In Bihar the gaur is found chiefly in the Valmiki Tiger Reserve of West Champaran, so questions 114 and 115 of this paper are in truth about the same forest.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The instinctive pick, because Bihar is a major cattle-rearing State and the cow is culturally central. But no Indian State names the cow its state animal. The designation is not restricted to wild species — Arunachal Pradesh's state animal is the mithun or gayal, a domesticated bovine — so the reason the cow fails here is simply that no State has chosen it, not that a domestic animal could not be chosen. Note too that the key's word is 'Bull', not 'Cow' — the paper is pointing at a male wild ox, and the gap between the two options is deliberate.  (c) The most defensible wrong answer, because India genuinely has a wild bovine called a buffalo — Bubalus arnee, the wild water buffalo, IUCN Endangered and Schedule I exactly like the gaur. A candidate who correctly senses that the answer must be a wild bovid can land here. But the wild buffalo is the state animal of Chhattisgarh, not Bihar, and its Indian strongholds lie in Assam and Chhattisgarh.  (d) No Indian State designates a horse as its state animal, and the horse is not a wild Indian species, so it falls outside the category altogether. It is filler, completing a quartet of familiar farm animals, and should be struck first. Its presence is itself a hint: when every option is domestic livestock, the examiner is using a loose common name to stand in for a wild species.

Concept: State symbols are administrative designations rather than statutory categories: each State government adopts an animal, a bird, a tree and a flower as emblems of its natural heritage, and the choices are almost always wild native species, not domesticated ones. Bihar's set is worth memorising as a block, because BPSC asks all four. The state animal is the gaur, Bos gaurus. The state bird is the house sparrow, Passer domesticus — a pointed choice, since the sparrow is an ordinary urban bird whose decline the designation was meant to publicise. The state tree is the peepal or sacred fig, Ficus religiosa. The state flower is the kachnar, Bauhinia variegata — not the marigold, which several coaching lists print in error. Around these sit Bihar's conservation flagships: the Gangetic dolphin, India's national aquatic animal, protected in the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary near Bhagalpur, and the tigers of Valmiki. Notice how the gaur ties the symbols back to the map — Bihar's state animal survives in the State essentially only inside Bihar's only national park, so the emblem and the protected-area question answer each other.

State PCS 2025 Q115 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q115 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer