Firefox is a Red Panda
If you've been using the internet since its inception, you're probably on your seventh or eighth browser by now. People used to use Netscape to browse the web before Internet Explorer and Safari became popular. And, eventually, they had Google Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. Firefox is a well-known browser that accounts for slightly more than 4% of global browser usage as of January 2022. It's not a huge chunk, but its popularity is fairly stable. Even if you don't use it, you're probably familiar with their flaming fox logo. The strange thing is, it was never meant to be a fox.
Mozilla, the business behind Firefox, was founded in 1998, following the demise of Netscape. It was created by many of the same people, and their original logo was a phoenix. Does that make sense? They were emerging from the ashes of Netscape. They needed to alter their name from Netscape to something fresh, so they chose an animal that few people knew about at the time. They decided on the red panda. Despite its name, the Firefox logo is a red panda. The issue is a translation error, as well as the fact that a stylized, cartoon red panda can easily pass for a fox. When translated from a language like Chinese into English, many words take on literal meanings. As a result, the Chinese word for red panda, "h?o h," literally translates to fire fox. Because that's how a red panda looks, which is why so many people think the animal in the logo is a fox.
