Five Animals

In the Chinese martial arts, imagery of the Five Animals (Chinese: 五形; pinyin: wǔ xíng; literally "Five Forms")—Tiger, Crane, Leopard, Snake, and Dragon—appears predominantly in Southern styles, especially those associated with Guangdong and Fujian Provinces. An alternate selection which is also widely used is the crane, the tiger, the monkey, the snake, and the mantis.

The Five Animal martial arts supposedly originated from the Henan Shaolin Temple, which is north of the Yangtze River, even though imagery of these particular five animals as a distinct set (i.e. in the absence of other animals such as the horse or the monkey as in T'ai chi ch'uan or Xíngyìquán) is either rare in Northern Shaolin martial arts—and Northern Chinese martial arts in general—or recent (cf. wǔxíngbāfǎquán; 五形八法拳; "Five Form Eight Method Fist").

In Mandarin, "wǔxíng" is the pronunciation not only of "Five Animals," but also of "Five Elements," the core techniques of Xíngyìquán, which also features animal mimicry (but of 10 or 12 animals rather than 5) and, with its high narrow Sāntǐshì (三體勢) stance, looks nothing so much like a Fujianese Southern style stranded in the North.

Although the technique is mainly associated with the tiger, dragon, snake, crane and leopard, many other animal styles have been developed, including panther, praying mantis (northern and southern styles), horse, cobra, bull, wolf, deer, bear, boar, eagle, python, scorpion, elephant, lion, frog, duck, dog, crow, tiger cub, chicken, hawk, turtle, swallow, lizard and a host of others.