I was playing with your file and changed the last block:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp :var alist=animal_list()
(mapcar #'(lambda (x) (message "mapcar %s" x)) alist)
#+end_src

#+RESULTS:
| mapcar 10 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 103 | mapcar 97 | mapcar 122 | mapcar 101
| mapcar 108 | mapcar 108 | mapcar 101 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 10 | mapcar 10
| mapcar 34 | mapcar 103 | mapcar 105 | mapcar 114 | mapcar 97 | mapcar 102
| mapcar 102 | mapcar 101 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 10 | mapcar 10 | mapcar 34 |
mapcar 108 | mapcar 105 | mapcar 111 | mapcar 110 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 10 |
mapcar 10 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 116 | mapcar 105 | mapcar 103 | mapcar 101 |
mapcar 114 | mapcar 34 | mapcar 10 |

Aparently, you animal_alist is a string and when you pass it to (mapcar)
you get the characters

Hope it helps, /PA
-- 
Fragen sind nicht da um beantwortet zu werden,
Fragen sind da um gestellt zu werden
Georg Kreisler

Headaches with a Juju log:
unit-basic-16: 09:17:36 WARNING juju.worker.uniter.operation we should run
a leader-deposed hook here, but we can't yet