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Many have speculated about which real-life animals inspired the first legends. ... Ancient humans encountering whale bones would have no way of knowing that the animals were sea-based, ...
- Theories and Discovery
Mathematician Who Made Sense of the Universe's Randomness...
- Reptiles
Komodo Dragons Have Iron-Coated Teeth, Study Finds. New...
- Joseph Stromberg
A number of interplanetary destinations could harbor...
- Theories and Discovery
- Unicorns
- Merpeople
- Sirens
- Pontianak
- Werewolf
- Vampires
- Zombies
- Leprechaun
- Dragons
- Cyclops
In the 4th century BCE, Greek physician Ctesias describeda strange animal. It was large, fast, and strong, with a white body, a red head, and dark blue eyes. It also had a roughly two-foot-long horn—white on the bottom and black in the middle, with a crimson red tip—growing from its forehead. Catching the creature was nearly impossible, unless it c...
Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid—and the exceptionally more cheerful Disney cartoon she inspired—is probably the most famous merperson of all time, but tales of half-human, half-fish creatures go back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, and are present in legends from cultures around the world. Slavic mythology, for example, has the Rusalka, whi...
Whatever you do, don’t confuse mermaids with sirens—though they have been conflated, they’re not the same thing. Sirens were half-women, half-bird creatures from Greek mythology that ruthlessly lured sailors to untimely deaths with their song. According toBritannica, one theory is that these creatures “seem to have evolved from an ancient tale of t...
Enough with the stories about vengeful half-woman creatures who lure men to their deaths just because—let’s talk about a spirit from South Asian folklore who has a very good reason for what she does. In Malaysia, a woman who has endured suffering during death—whether it occurs in childbirth or at the hands of a man—is sometimes said to become a spi...
As it turns out, the werewolf might be as old as, well, literature itself. One version of The Epic of Gilgamesh features a story about a woman who turned a former paramour into a wolf. Men who turned into wolves also popped upin the mythology of Ancient Rome and Greece. As Tanika Koosmen pointed out in a piece for The Conversation, Herodotus wrote ...
Stories about demons that survive by sucking the bloody life force from humans have been around for millennia, but modern vampires are way more recent than you probably think: In fact, the word vampyre only pops up in the English written record around the turn of the 18th century. (Perhaps the earliest extant reference actually referred to vampires...
Thanks to pop culture, we tend to think of zombies as undead flesh-eaters that are especially hungry for braaaaaains. We have George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead to thank for some of that, but not the bit about brains—thatcomes from the 1985 movie Return of the Living Dead, in which zombies were said to snack on gray matter because it took awa...
Fun fact: Googling the phrase leprechaun origins will not get you what you need to know about where leprechauns come from, but instead everything you never knew you needed to know about the 2014 movie Leprechaun: Origins. Getting the real story requires following the research rainbow right to a pot of gold, a.k.a., a piece on IrishCentral.comby Sea...
Like many of the creatures on this list, accounts of dragon-like beings go way back: They show up as giant serpents in Mesopotamian art, appear in the realm of the dead in ancient Egyptian mythology, spit venom in Ancient Greek tales, and symbolized good fortune in Chinese folklore. Interestingly, according to Smithsonianmagazine, these myths evolv...
If there’s anything we’ve learned so far, it’s that many mythological creatures probably had a basis in real animals. Cyclops, the famous one-eyed giants of Greek mythology, might be another example. They may have been inspired by the discovery of bonesbelonging to a relative of the modern day elephant. These creatures were up to 15 feet tall, had ...
- Jon Mayer
Aug 10, 2024 · The dire wolf is an extinct canine that lived approximately 125,000 to 9,500 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods. The Aenocyon dirus was a large predator. It could extend to five feet from the top of its head to the end of its tail. Dire wolves typically weighed about 150-200 pounds.
- Okapi. One animal that may have inspired mythology is the okapi. These deer-like mammals live in the rainforests of Africa and appear to be a combination of a giraffe, zebra, and antelope.
- Gigantopithecus. Everything we know about gigantopithecus comes from fossils, including enormous teeth and jaw bones. It was the largest ape to ever live—researchers estimate it was 10 feet tall and 1,200 pounds—and it roamed the forests of Asia as recently as 300,000 years ago.
- Giant Oarfish. Also known as the king of herrings or ribbonfish, the giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne) is the world's largest bony fish. Growing up to 36 feet long, this fish spends its time gracefully slithering through the ocean's deepest depths between 656 and 3,280 feet.
- Manatee. While sailing near Haiti, Christopher Columbus believed he saw mermaids. He even got close enough to render himself unimpressed, stating that in person, they were “not half as beautiful as they are painted.”
Feb 10, 2024 · Real-life snakes, says Larrington, may have inspired the myths. "People have [also] suggested that dinosaur fossils might have played a part. But there's no real correlation between dragon stories ...
Dec 21, 2020 · London Natural History Museum. Mermaids, sea serpents, manatees and giant oarfish may not appear to have much in common. But these creatures actually share a core characteristic: The first two are ...
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Meet 10 creatures whose extreme features probably inspired many of the finest mythical beasts of lore and legend. Basilisk. According to European mythology the Basilisk is a legendary serpentine reptile reputed to be able to kill with a single glance. The story goes that it met its demise when a weasel was thrown into the hole in which it lived ...
