I'd have to pick gryphons, for a variety of reasons:
- Lions are badass, eagles are badass, making gryphons badass squared
- Historically associated with strength and protection
- They're often portrayed as having human-level intelligence and how fucking cool would it be to talk to one
- They would give the absolute best cuddles and you cannot convince me otherwise
Sure, but there aren't a lot of ideas that appear spontaneously on multiple continents. "What if a person had a snake body for legs" happened both in Greece and India, probably totally independently. That's really neat!