When you think of college mascots you probably think of lions, tigers and bears, oh my!

In fact the most popular and common college mascots at four-year colleges are: eagles, tigers, bulldogs, panthers, knights, lions, bears, hawks, cougars and pioneers.

All these mascots signify strength, fierceness, pride and intimidation.

But there are some college mascots that evoke the opposite. We have compiled a list of some of the funniest and strangest college mascots.

The University of California-Santa Cruz is home to Sammy the Banana Slug. A banana slug is a slimy yellow mollusc found near the northern California coastal community of Santa Cruz. They adopted the slug as a mascot as a commentary on the overemphasis of athletics at many universities.

You can find the Super Frog the Horned Frog at Texas Christian University. TCU has been using the horned toad as a mascot since 1897. It’s the state reptile of Texas and it is traditionally believed to have ancient powers. The mascot’s name used to be Addy the All-American  frog, but became Super Frog in 1979.

And how can we forget about the Artie the fighting Artichoke. Doesn’t he sound scary? Especially if you don’t like to eat your vegetables. Well, it’s like this: during the 1970s, students at SCC were furious because they felt too much money was being spent to make the school a junior college sports powerhouse. So, when student government was asked to hold an election to name the mascot, they ran three choices: the artichoke, the rutabaga, and the scoundrel. Artie won. The college called the election null and void, but the artichoke stuck around long after the political fight ended.

The North Carolina School of Arts has a fighting pickle for their mascot. The pickle may be a tribute to a pickle company that used to donate money to the school or may be a form of protest to the school’s 1972 search for a militaristic school mascot name and that didn’t fly with the students who were protesting the Vietnam war. The North Carolina School of Arts got themselves into a pickle didn’t they?

Before you laugh at these college mascots completely, don’t forget that they’ve got a bunch of strong, in shape athletes behind them.