The logo is indeed based on a red panda, at least until the Firefox logo became more minimalistic. The English word for the red panda is Firefox. https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2019/06/14/the-story-behind-the-mozilla-firefox-logo I kinda miss the old firey bird logo used for when the web browser was originally called Phoenix (0.1 to 0.5) and Firebird (0.6 to 0.7) until it was renamed as Firefox as of the 0.8 Release. Phoenix bios already had Phoenix name and Firebird sql got the name shortly before.

Check this out; https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/support-forum-contributors/713691?last=76782 12 Famous Logos With a Secret Meaning . . . Including Mozilla Firefox