I’m a bit curious as to which animals were NOT included in the “Great Circle” (the term I personally use for this) that stood around Aslan when he gave them the ability to speak when Narnia was created.

The wiki has a very comprehensive list of talking beasts. And there are a lot. Some we don’t hear about much. For example, at the witch’s castle near the end of LWW, there’s mention of a kangaroo. By that logic, wallabies could also be talking beasts.

A more notable example is in TMN, which mentions elephants. There’s nothing in the first 5 books that insinuates elephants are among the talking animals of Narnia, but they clearly are.

Obviously the menagerie goes beyond Lewis’s native Britain. In fact, given that in PC it’s revealed that mice initially didn’t have the ability to talk, there are probably a number of animals native to Britain that were dumb beasts. I’m curious about which ones, though.

And are certain animals native to certain parts of Narnia? It would certainly explain the lack of elephants in the books outside TMN.