The Pictish Beast (sometimes Pictish Dragon or Pictish Elephant) is a conventional representation of an animal, distinct to the early medieval culture of the Picts of Scotland. The great majority of surviving examples are on Pictish stones.

The Pictish Beast accounts for about 40% of all Pictish animal depictions, and so was likely of great importance.^{[citation needed]}

A comprehensive collection of depictions of the Pictish Beast was given by John Stuart as Plate 22 in Sculptured Stones of Scotland Volume 2, 1867. Depictions are shown at a consistent scale and oriented as they were on the stones. The sequence in which they appear is described as

indicating their development from the outline form in which they first appear on the rude pillars, to that in which the outline is filled up with the ornamental devices of the cross-slabs

The orientation of the beast's back on Stuart's Plate 22 is predominantly horizontal, or slightly inclined; only on the Maiden Stone and at Dunfallandy is it at 45° and on Meigle 5 vertical. The last may be explained by its position on the stone: it is on the narrow left side, where it occupies 90% of the available width. One omission from Stuart's plate is the symbol in the Doo Cave at East Wemyss, recorded by Anderson in 1881. Anderson described it as "the symbolic animal, with the long jaws and the crest and the scroll-like feet". Absent from the Doo Cave figure is the crest from the top of the beast's head and the tail; the rear scroll-like feet are clearly divided into two limbs.

In the Historic Scotland guidebook The Picts, Jill Harden writes:

... most common of all [the animal symbols] is the Pictish beast. This intriguing figure is clearly swimming. Is it a porpoise, a dolphin or a creature of myth?

Cetaceans are present along the east coast of Scotland. Chanonry Point and the Sutors of Cromarty lie close to the Pictish monasteries at Portmahomack and Rosemarkie and are recognised as some of the best sites in Britain for viewing bottlenose dolphins from the land.