Come fly with me

Why are so many professional sports teams (as opposed to amateur sports teams?) named after birds? Surely, there must be a more threatening group of creatures in the animal kingdom. Eagles are threatening and all, but I'd rather have to fight an eagle than, say, a baby elephant. There are the 12 bird teams out of a total 122 in the four "major" sports:

Anahiem Ducks

Atlanta Hawks

Atlanta Falcons

Arizona Cardinals

Baltimore Orioles

Baltimore Ravens (To be fair, I came across a couple ravens in Utah and they did not look very friendly at all)

Chicago Blackhawks

Philadelphia Eagles

Pittsburgh Penguins

Seattle Seahawks

St. Louis Cardinals

Toronto Blue Jays

That means sports as a whole consists of 9.8% cowardice. That's not even counting other man-eaters like the California Angels, Buffalo Bills, and Boston Red Sox. Where do these establishments get the audacity to think a city should get behind a bird to represent its biggest, strongest, and fastest? And if the world insists on having avian athletes, where are my New York Pigeons? Nobody likes the Mets anyway.

*Major in quotations because the NHL is one big ball of fail.