Some figurines may have been made specifically as toys. A number were jointed to allow their heads to bob or their limbs to move, and there were also model carts with moving wheels. However, animals played an important role in Harappan iconography, and many terra-cottas may have had a ritual use. Almost every creature that the Harappans were familiar with, from fishes and hares to elephants and rhinos, were depicted as terra-cotta figurines or as images on seals and other inscribed objects. Some terra-cottas may have been made for sacrifice, substituting for a live animal, a common practice in later times. Occasionally human or animal figurines were placed in burials. Small figurines, including squirrels, rams, and other animals molded in faience or carved in shell, may have been worn or carried as amulets.
Two miniature bronze animals are known from Mohenjo-daro: a beautiful water buffalo and a goat forming the end of a pin. There are also a few examples of animals sculpted in stone. Given the rarity of Indus sculptures, it seems likely that they had special significance, though this need not necessarily have been religious. Two stone figures of rams or bulls and a third of a composite beast are known from Mohenjo-daro. The latter has an elephant's trunk, ram's horns, and the body of a bull. Other depictions of hybrid animals occur, in terra-cotta and on seals, and, although none is exactly parallel to this one, a number of them use all these elements in different combinations, along with parts of tigers, water buffaloes, goats, and antelopes. In one example, the animal's tail is replaced by a cobra, a creature steeped in religious significance in India. Sometimes animals are shown with three heads, each from a different animal. Some also combine people and animals, particularly bulls, buffaloes, and tigers.
One seal depicts a pipal tree from whose trunk grow two unicorns' necks and heads. The unicorn is the most common image on seals. Although some scholars argue that this was a humpless bull shown in profile, it is more commonly thought that it represented a single-horned creature, combining features of both bull and antelope; a few figurines from Harappa, Chanhu-daro, and Lothal confirm this. It is clearly male, as are many other animals depicted on seals. Generally the unicorn is shown with a collar around its neck and a blanket across its frontquarters; often the blanket strongly resembles a pipal leaf. This is the most subtle version of the composite beast theme; the skillful blending of domestic and wild animals may have had iconographic significance, reflecting the integration of different ethnic groups or economic specialties into Harappan society.
Bulls and water buffalo played a major role in Harappan iconography. Massive bulls were a popular subject for figurines and were also shown on seals; the presence of cattle bones in the pit associated with a fire altar at Kalibangan and in another at Rakhigarhi indicates that cattle were chosen as sacrificial victims. Headdresses made from the horns of a buffalo or less commonly of a bull were worn by figures that seem to represent deities in mythological scenes on seals and in other contexts. Buffalo horns, often with pendant stars or associated with pipal leaves or flowers, also appeared on pottery from the Early Harappan period onward. A jar from Padri in Gujarat is decorated with a buffalo horn motif and with a large figure in a ragged skirt wearing an enormous pair of buffalo horns. Buffaloes frequently appear in scenes on seals or tablets, often in combat with humans. In some, a figure wrestles one or two animals; in others, a man stands with one foot on the animal's bowed head and pierces its body with a spear.
Scenes of combat between man and beast also feature tigers. In some, a male or female figure strangles two tigers; in others, a tiger is attacked by an individual with a bull's head. Some terra-cotta figurines depict tigers or other felines, and tiger stripes are shown on some of the figures identified as deities. In some scenes a stick figure sits in a neem tree, watched by a prowling tiger looking back over its shoulder. The figure balances on the tree branch with its legs in a similar posture to that of the stone sculptures, squatting on the heels with one knee raised; it is slender, wears neither clothes nor jewelry, and is apparently genderless. It seems that bovids and tigers, magnificent and powerful creatures, played a major and balancing role in the iconography of the Indus civilization, both individually and in combination. Both appear in later Indian religion, as vehicles for deities, as manifestations of gods in their more terrible forms, and as their opponents: for example, the goddess Durga riding a tiger and slaying the buffalo demon, Mahishasura. While the buffalo and bull, as well as the unicorn, are depicted as unmistakably male, tigers are not and may perhaps have been female, another significant duality.
The Harappans' concern with water is mirrored by the common occurrence of fish and gharials in their iconography. Parpola has convincingly argued that the fish sign in the Harappan script also represented stars, conceived to be swimming in the waters of the heavens. The words for "star" and "fish" are homonyms in the Dravidian languages (an early form of which might perhaps have been spoken by the Harappans), and Parpola has used this conjecture to identify the names of a number of constellations in the inscriptions on seals.
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