Elephant
Elephas maximus
Status: Endangered. Elephants are important to the environment because their passage through dense forests creates paths that other animals can use and traverse, as well as digging watering holes. As the largest herbivores in the world, they also transport and disperse seeds and provide fertilizer. The greatest threat to them is poaching for ivory trade.
In Southeast Asia, possession of sacred white elephants are revered as symbolic of godliness and royalty. Buddhists believe that such was one of the incarnations of Buddha. White (albino) elephants were, and still are),coveted by monarchs as signs that the ruler was just and favored. Such a mark of blessing would confer upon the whole kingdom, prosperity, health, and plenty.
It was said that the King of Siam would sometimes gift a white elephant in a malicious favor to someone that they disliked. The care and feeding of an elephant was no small burden upon one's finances, and a royal gift is not one to be spurned (or allowed to die). This is the origin of the modern day usage of calling an unwanted, expensive, burdensome gift, a "white elephant".
On the eve of Bautama Buddha's birth, his mother, Queen Maha Maya had a dream in which an elephant circled round her three times, gave her a gift of a lotus flower, and entered into her womb from the right side.
References:
The White Elephant. (1884). The British Medical Journal, 1(1204), 179-179. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25265389
Bishop, C. W. (1921). The Elephant and Its Ivory in Ancient China. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 41, 290-306. https://doi.org/10.2307/593732
Oxford Dictionary: "white elephant" https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/white-elephant
Encylopedia Britannica: "Maha Maya" https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maha-Maya
Bowring, Sir John. "The Kingdom and People of Siam; with A narrative of the mission to that country in 1855" Volume II. London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1857.