Replace the drop-down in Views with an image map I am looking for a way to replace one of the exposed filters used in the Views module with an Image Map (e.g. a map of the country). 

Is there a way for doing this?
Strictly off the top of my head here...

You should be able to point the theming of an exposed filter to a custom theme function. Take a look at Better Exposed Filters for how to do so -- it's different between Views 2 and 3 and a little different between D6 and D7. The key will be to build the image map such that the URLs it redirects to are the same format that Views is expecting. Eg: test?field_animals_value[]=Dog

'Course you won't be able to use this solution with any filter on changing content without updating the image map....