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Zoology was not always as exact as it is now. Long ago, thinkers like Aristotle and Pliny the Elder did their best to collect all available knowledge about animals, compiling it into vast, detailed volumes. However, they didn't always get everything right.
Before the invention of airplanes, cameras, and Google, most people had never laid eyes on an elephant. To understand what an elephant looked like, their only choice was to rely on the stories of those who had seen one—and they had to trust whatever they were told. Some of these wild tales were even recorded—and for almost two millennia, people across Europe accepted these ideas as facts.
10. Elephants Are in a Never-Ending Battle with Dragons
The Greeks and Romans were captivated by elephants. Having encountered them in India and Africa, they became convinced that elephants were the most intelligent creatures on Earth. This belief made sense at the time. They had already taught elephants to perform extraordinary feats, from walking on tightropes to painting Greek letters with a brush. Because of this, people were eager to believe any story they heard or read about elephants.
"When an elephant encounters a man lost in the desert," one Roman encyclopedia claimed, "[and realizes the man is lost, then] the elephant . . points the way." But as dependable as elephants were at giving directions, the book warned, getting an elephant onto a boat was another challenge. It would refuse to board unless someone promised it would be safely returned home.
The same book also suggested that dragons were "always at war with the elephant." In India, dragons would attack elephants, trying to crush them while seeking to feast on their cold blood. However, a sharp elephant could defeat the dragon by knocking it down and crushing it underfoot.
As strange as this all seems, it appears no one ever bothered to correct these tales. Over 100 years after that book was written, another one was released, repeating most of the same claims, but with one added twist. It stated that elephants reproduced by consuming a magical root, which caused babies to spontaneously appear in their wombs.
9. Aurochs Can Shoot Toxic Poop
All modern dairy cows and domestic cattle trace their lineage to one animal: the aurochs. The last aurochs went extinct around 400 years ago. But according to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the world is better off without them.
The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder claimed that aurochs had horns that curved inward. When attacked by predators, their horns were ineffective. Their only defense, he said, was the one gift from God: running and pooping.
"While in the act of running," Pliny wrote, "it shoots out its excrement." And not just a little bit—it could project it as far as 1.2 meters (4 feet), according to Pliny. Their airborne excrement wasn’t just disgusting—it also burned predators like fire.
Pliny’s stories about the aurochs’ weaponized poop persisted into the Middle Ages. But he wasn’t the only one spreading these tales. Aristotle also endorsed Pliny's accounts, except for one detail. According to Aristotle, the 1-meter (4-foot) distance was an understatement—aurochs could easily hit targets as far as 1.8 meters (6 feet) away.
8. Salamanders Have the Power to Extinguish Fires
For about a millennium, humans believed salamanders were magical. The Romans thought they were so cold that they could put out fires just by touching them.
This belief also came from Pliny the Elder. But in this case, he actually decided to test the claim. After declaring to Rome that salamanders could extinguish flames with their touch, Pliny threw a salamander into a fire himself. To his disappointment, the creature wasn’t magical—it was simply dead.
However, nobody seemed to take Pliny seriously. A thousand years later, the Jewish rabbi Rashi was still writing about the salamanders’ incredible magical abilities, even suggesting that they could become fireproof by covering themselves with salamander blood.
He also claimed that salamanders are born from flames. Specifically, he argued that a new salamander comes into existence when a glassblower keeps his furnace burning for seven straight days. After the seventh day, Rashi asserted, a fresh salamander would emerge from the fire.
7. Eels Emerge From the Mud
Ancient writers believed salamanders weren't the only creatures that appeared out of nowhere. Aristotle was convinced that many animals were born spontaneously. He tried to convince the world of several examples of what he called "spontaneous generation." But the one that gained the most attention was his theory that eels magically emerge from mud.
For over two millennia, nobody questioned Aristotle's idea that eels just appeared out of nowhere. However, there were varying opinions on how it happened. Pliny suggested that they reproduced by rubbing against rocks, while the 17th-century English writer Izaak Walton believed they grew from "a particular dew falling in the months of May and June."
But everyone agreed on one thing: Eels were a divine gift.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that anyone was able to prove eels actually reproduced. The issue was that no one could locate their reproductive organs. Eventually, though, a man was born who was willing to investigate private parts long enough to solve the mystery: Sigmund Freud.
That's right. Before becoming the father of psychology, Freud was the one who unraveled the mystery of how eels engage in reproduction.
6. Whales Have Antennae
In the 17th century, a Frenchman named Pierre Pomet published a book about the natural world, filled with illustrations of the bizarre creatures inhabiting our Earth. Each illustration was brimming with vivid details of these strange animals—all based on what Pomet had seen when he closed his eyes and imagined very, very hard.
Pomet's depiction of whales was particularly bizarre. He claimed you could tell a male whale from a female whale by looking at their heads. According to Pomet, the males had hands with fingers, a large sheet of metal on their backs, and massive armored heads resembling the ones on Chinese dragons. And on top of their heads were two long antennae, each adorned with a fluffy little pom-pom at the end.
His female whales were slightly more realistic, though they still had antennae. Pomet argued that these antennae were crucial in distinguishing the sexes. For females, he said, the antennae were noticeably shorter and stubby.
5. Crocodiles Are Essentially Monkeys
Ancient civilizations had a fairly accurate understanding of crocodiles, but somehow, we lost that knowledge by the medieval period. This is evident when you look at how crocodiles were depicted in the Book of Flowers, an 11th-century encyclopedia, where the creatures look more like monkeys than actual crocodiles.
The Book of Flowers described crocodiles as having long, curly tails, hands, and hairy faces. It’s a peculiar description, and one might assume they simply mixed up the names. But their version of crocodiles isn’t entirely monkey-like. The bodies of these creatures are long, tough, and scaly like a real crocodile's. The only difference is that they sport monkey heads on top.
For the next few centuries, our understanding of crocodiles didn’t improve much. Later medieval artists began to get the tails right but still kept the monkey faces. Some artists even gave these creatures huge, horse-like legs or made them resemble dogs with scales. As no one who had actually seen a crocodile stepped in to correct them, European artists continued to draw crocodiles like this until the 17th century.
4. Rhinoceroses and Elephants Are Mortal Enemies
Pliny the Elder claimed that rhinoceroses and elephants absolutely despised each other. As soon as they laid eyes on each other, Pliny said, they would immediately engage in a fierce brawl, fighting in what could only be described as a legendary battle of titans.
Pliny the Elder’s stories about rhino-on-elephant violence became so widely believed that Manuel I, the 15th-century king of Portugal, decided to test them. He had both a rhinoceros and an elephant shipped to Portugal and set them up for a dramatic showdown.
However, things didn’t go as expected. Elephants, it turned out, are lovers, not fighters. As soon as the elephant saw the rhinoceros, it immediately ran away in fear.
Despite this, Manuel’s experiment didn’t lead to a clearer understanding of animals. Instead, the stories about his rhinoceros spread across Europe, growing more bizarre with every retelling.
A German woodworker named Albrecht Durer became so fascinated by the stories that he decided to illustrate what he had heard. His depiction of the rhinoceros featured scaly legs and tough, armor-like plates on its back. Durer’s notes described the rhinoceros as 'the color of a speckled tortoise [and is] covered with thick scales.'
3. Pelican Blood Can Resurrect the Dead
In the seventh century, a writer named Isidore of Seville made an odd claim about pelicans: These birds possessed magical blood that could bring the dead back to life.
He described a bizarre ritual for pelicans: As they matured, a young pelican would be killed by its mother. After mourning for three days, the mother would begin to peck at her chest until it bled. As her blood touched the body of her dead offspring, they would miraculously come back to life.
Isidore didn’t seem completely convinced by his own tale, and it likely should have been regarded as a myth. But instead, it became widely accepted as truth. By the 13th century, multiple books cited his story as scientific fact.
By the 16th century, the image of a pelican stabbing itself became the official emblem of Queen Elizabeth. It even appeared on the cover of the first edition of the King James Bible.
2. Vipers Consume Each Other During Reproduction
In the eyes of the Greeks and Romans, giving birth was a dreadful ordeal for vipers. Yet, it was something they had to endure: In order to reproduce, both viper parents had to meet their end.
When two vipers mated, as per the Greeks and Romans, the male would thrust his head into the female’s mouth and eject semen into her. This would cause the female to become so overwhelmed that she would bite down and sever the male’s head.
But her fate was no better. Soon, she would carry up to 20 offspring inside her womb, and they would be so eager to escape that they would gnaw their way through her belly.
It was already a bizarre tale, but it only grew stranger over time. By the third century AD, Roman authors not only spread the grim story of viper mating, but also began claiming that vipers resembled humans. A book called the Physiologus stated, “The male viper resembles a man, and the female resembles a woman up to the waist, but below the waist, she has a crocodile’s tail.”
1. Bees Can Be Killed By A Menstruating Woman’s Stare
Pliny the Elder wasn’t just perplexed by animals; he also had odd views about women. He particularly struggled with understanding menstruation, seeing it as something fearsome. He insisted that a menstruating woman’s gaze could be lethal. “A swarm of bees, if looked upon by her,” he warned, “will die immediately.”
Despite the threat posed by menstruating women, Pliny also believed bees had an extraordinary power. He claimed that dead bees could be revived by covering them with mud and the body of an ox or bull.
While later writers didn’t fully accept Pliny’s resurrection idea, they did agree with him about the bull connection. Saint Augustine and Isidore of Seville were certain that bees didn’t engage in reproduction. Instead, they believed bees came into existence by spontaneously generating from rotting cow flesh.
