While traditional usage of pack animals by nomadic tribespeople is declining, a new market is growing in the tourist expeditions industry in regions such as the High Atlas mountains of Morocco, allowing visitors the comfort of backpacking with animals. Alternatively, a pair of weighted materials (often placed symmetrically) are called panniers. Pack animals may be fitted with pack saddles and may also carry saddlebags. Hauling of goods in wagons with horses and oxen gradually displaced the use of packhorses, which had been important until the Middle Ages, by the sixteenth century.

US Marines training in resupply with pack mules. Oceania - Donkeys, horses, dromedaries, mules, oxen.North Africa and Middle East - Dromedaries, horses, donkeys, mules, oxen.North America - Horses, mules, donkeys, goats.South and Southeast Asia - Water buffaloes, yaks, Asian elephants.Central Asia - Bactrian camels, yaks, Horses, mules, donkeys.Central Africa and Southern Africa - Oxen, mules, donkeys.Occasionally, dogs can be used to carry small loads. Traditional pack animals include ungulates such as camels, the domestic yak, reindeer, goats, water buffaloes and llama, and domesticated members of the horse family including horses, donkeys, and mules.

The term pack animal can also refer to animals which naturally live and hunt in packs in the wild, such as wolves, hyenas, dogs etc., i.e. For instance, sled dogs pull loads but do not normally carry them, while working elephants have been used for centuries to haul logs out of forests. The term pack animal is traditionally used in contrast to draft animal, which is a working animal that typically pulls a load behind itself (such as a plow, a cart, a sled or a heavy log) rather than carrying cargo directly on its back.

Traditional pack animals are diverse including camels, goats, yaks, reindeer, water buffaloes, and llamas as well as the more familiar pack animals like dogs, horses, donkeys, and mules.

Horse packing with traditional Australian pack saddleĪ pack animal, also known as a sumpter animal or beast of burden, is an individual or type of working animal used by humans as means of transporting materials by attaching them so their weight bears on the animal's back, in contrast to draft animals which pull loads but do not carry them.

Torchwood pack animals