The animals of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild flesh out the empty plains of Hyrule that were deserted after the Calamity Event. Between the horses grazing the Great Plateau, the elk roaming Mount Hylia, and the trout swimming in Faron’s rivers, there is so little life inhabiting this once great kingdom. However, some of these creatures are still difficult for Link and players to find despite how integral they to the environments of the game.
Their rareness is not without purpose, of course. Chance encounters with BOTW's birds, fish and other animals are part of what makes exploring the game's amazing world so fun. Nothing beats the experience of stumbling upon Naydra the Blue Dragon among the sparkling snow sheets of Mount Naydra.
However, the dragons are nowhere near the rarest animal encounters in BOTW, as long-time players of the game will know their spawn locations for dragon scale farming. Some of the rarer animals in BOTW are actually with creatures who are not magical at all, even if their secretiveness elevates them to the status of myth. Following is a list of BOTW's rarest animal players may not have seen yet.
BOTW’s Rarest Animal Encounters
Two of BOTW’s rarest animals are bears and the Lord of the Mountain. There are two species of bear in BOTW: the Honeyvore and the Grizzlemaw. What makes them both so rare is that they spawn in remote locations, whether that be in the elevated Gerudo Highlands or deep within the Tabantha Frontier. Bear spawn rates in BOTW are low, too, so finding both the location bears spawn in and then the bears themselves is a difficult task. The Lord of the Mountain - a mythical horse - is also difficult to find for the same reason. Its location is atop the remote Satori Mountain. What makes this encounter even rarer is that the Lord of the Mountain doesn’t always spawn, and there’s no apparent reason behind when it appears. All players can do is hope the horse will emanate its green glow at Mount Satori’s peak to signal its arrival.
Even rarer than these two animals is BOTW’s prizewinning fish, the Sanke Carp. What makes this vibrantly colored fish so difficult to find is that it is both bred to be rare in Legend of Zelda lore and is almost indistinguishable from other fish in the water. Reddit user DancyLawyer only found the Sanke Carp on their 50th playthrough of the game!
But the rarest animal of all in BOTW has to be the rainbow pigeon. Captured by Reddit user def_not_yours, the rainbow pigeon was found only on their fourth playthrough five years after the game launched. Based on the comments that accompany the picture, few other players have found this beautiful bird flying around yet either, thus making it (at least anecdotally) Breath of the Wild’s rarest animal.
Source: DancyLawyer/Reddit, def_not_yours/Reddit