A pack animal or beast of burden is a working animal used by humans as means of transporting materials by attaching them so their weight bears on the animal's back; the term may be applied to either an individual animal or a species so employed. The term pack animal is sometimes used in contrast to draft animal, which is a working animal that typically pulls a load behind itself (such as a plow or a wheeled cart) rather than carrying cargo directly on its back.

Many ungulate species are traditional pack animals, including elephants, camels, the yak, reindeer, goats, water buffalo and llama, and many of the domesticated Equidae (horse family).

The term is not routinely applied to humans carrying loads on their backs except to make a pejorative point about the injustice of so employing them, or about the privation that usually occasions accepting such work without explicit coercion. (The 1978 Rolling Stones song "Beast of Burden" refers to a sense of abuse, accepted within a romantic relationship.) Nevertheless, from a physical point of view, certainly many considerations apply equally to human and other pack animals, without considering the range of social conditions ranging through slaves, abused women and children, Himalayan and African natives employed as expedition porters, vacationing students whose duties as staff of mountaineering huts include packing heavy loads of supplies up steep slopes, and purely recreational hikers and backpackers including both short-trip ones, and long-trip backpackers who court injury and emaciation in carrying their heavy loads.

Benjamin Franklin McGrath, known as Frank McGrath (February 2, 1903 – May 13, 1967), was an American television actor who played the comical and optimistic cook, "Charlie B. Wooster", on the Western television series Wagon Train on, first, NBC and then ABC. McGrath appeared in all 272 episodes in the eight seasons of the series, which had ended its run only two years before his death. McGrath's Wooster character hence provided the meals and companionship for both fictional trailmasters, Ward Bond as Seth Adams and John McIntire as Christopher "Chris" Hale.

McGrath was born in Mound City in Holt County in far northwestern Missouri. McGrath's first role, uncredited, was in the 1932 film The Rainbow Trail, a study of Mormon polygamy based on a 1915 Zane Grey novel of the same name. He was also a stunt performer. Even at the age of fifty-three, the durable McGrath did three separate horse fall and drag scenes for the 1956 John Wayne picture The Searchers not long after McGrath had barely recovered from having broken his back. A year before Wagon Train began, McGrath appeared briefly as ranch foreman John Pike in the 1956 episode "Quicksand" of the first hour-long television western series, ABC's Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker. In 1957, McGrath had an uncredited role as a stagecoach driver in the Henry Fonda film, The Tin Star. In 1958, he portrayed the character Jake Rivers in the episode "The Most Dangerous Man Alive" on NBC's Tales of Wells Fargo, starring Dale Robertson.

Richard Terfry (born March 4, 1972), who uses the stage name Buck 65, is a Canadian experimental artist, MC and turntablist. Underpinned by an extensive background in abstract hip hop, his more recent music has extensively incorporated blues, country, rock, folk and avant garde influences.

Terfry is also a radio host, hosting the weekday Radio 2 Drive show on CBC Radio 2 since September 2, 2008. In addition, he once hosted a weekday program on CBC Radio 3's web radio station.

Terfry was born in 1972 and raised in Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia, a rural community 40 km north of Halifax. He was first exposed to rap music in the mid-1980s while listening to CBC Stereo's late night show Brave New Waves, and then by listening to Halifax campus community radio station CKDU. CKDU then broadcast at only 33 watts, and he had to climb a tree in his yard to hear the station's hip hop show on his radio. Fascinated by hip hop, the young Terfry taught himself how to rap, DJ, and, later, to produce records. His musical influences include MC Shan, David Lynch, Gitche Manitou and Kool Keith.