Buzz
This list features animals that were once regarded as pure fantasy, only to be proven real later. Many of these so-called “legendary beasts” are so common now that it’s hard to imagine a zoo without them!
10. Gorilla
Although gorillas are now widely known, there was a time when they were no more than a myth. Explorers returned from African jungles with tales of huge, hairy man-like creatures of immense strength and temperament, often claiming they abducted and assaulted women. These accounts were dismissed by scientists as fiction, and the gorilla remained unknown to science until recently. The earliest known report of gorillas comes from the Greek explorer Hanno in the 5th century BC. Hanno traveled along the western coast of Africa, possibly near Sierra Leone or the Gulf of Guinea, and described an island inhabited by wild people, mostly women, covered in hair. He referred to them as “gorillae” according to his interpreters.
It’s worth mentioning that not everyone is convinced Hanno actually encountered true gorillas (his “gorillae” may have been chimpanzees). Later, in 1625, British explorer Andrew Batell reported seeing a “monster” covered in hair, except for its face and hands, which slept in trees and ate fruit. He described this “monster” as man-like, but “with the stature of a giant”. For many more years, gorillas were misunderstood, often seen as brutish, unintelligent, and violently aggressive. It wasn’t until 1847 that a Westerner, physician Thomas Savage, managed to obtain gorilla bones, including a skull, in Liberia and published the first formal description of the great ape. The following decade, explorer Paul du Chaillu became the first modern European to observe a live gorilla during his expeditions to equatorial Africa. The mountain gorilla, a different and larger species, was considered a myth until 1902!
9. Okapi
I’ve already discussed the Okapi, but it deserves a spot on this list. The Okapi was known to Ancient Egyptians (even though it wasn’t native to Egypt) and, of course, to the pygmies living in central African forests. However, Europeans didn’t believe the pygmies’ stories and thought the okapi was a mythical creature, dubbing it “The African Unicorn”! In 1890, explorer Henry Stanley ventured into the Congo jungles, where he encountered the native word “okapi” (which he misheard as “atti”). The pygmies used the term for both a non-native domestic horse and a large animal they sometimes hunted and ate.
A certain Sir Henry Johnston, who would later become the governor of Uganda, read Stanley’s book and became obsessed with the mysterious creature. He found tracks and pieces of striped skin that the pygmies claimed belonged to the elusive okapi. Johnston sent the skin to London, where scientists began to take a serious interest in the animal and speculated about its nature. Could it be an unknown species of jungle zebra? Or perhaps a late-surviving, prehistoric Hipparion proto-horse? Lacking a better specimen, they named the creature Equus johnstoni, tentatively assuming it was related to the horse and zebra genus.
In 1901, Johnston finally obtained an entire skin and a skull. He sent them to London, where scientists were astonished. The animal closely resembled some fossilized remains of an ancient giraffe relative discovered in 1838 in Greece! The mystery was finally resolved: the mythical African unicorn was real, but it wasn’t a zebra or a horse; it was the last living relative of the giraffe!
8. Giant Panda
Today, these mostly herbivorous, black-and-white bears are among the most beloved creatures on the planet (what scientists refer to as “charismatic megafauna”). Yet, for centuries, they were practically unknown, even in China! While Chinese artists have depicted black bears and bamboo forests for centuries, the giant panda never appeared in any artwork until the 20th century. The idea of a “white bear” in Chinese mountains was regarded as a myth until 1869, when French missionary Armand David sent the skin of a hunted specimen to Europe. Only then did scientists acknowledge pandas as real animals.
Giant pandas were first seen alive by a European in 1916, when German zoologist Hugo Weigold managed to see and purchase a cub. (Don’t get excited; baby pandas aren’t for sale anymore.) Interestingly, giant pandas are known in China as the Great Bear-Cat because of their vertical pupils, resembling cats rather than other bears. Once thought to be giant, odd relatives of the raccoon, DNA testing has confirmed what seemed obvious from the start: pandas are a true, albeit unique, member of the bear family.
7. Giraffe
Yes, the incredibly famous giraffe was once considered a mythical creature. Admittedly, if we had never seen a giraffe and someone showed us a picture, we might have a hard time believing such an animal existed. Just look at them! They’re certainly strange-looking creatures. Giraffes were somewhat known to the Ancient Egyptians, even though they weren’t native to Egypt (it’s said that Pharaoh Ramses II kept a giraffe, among other exotic animals, in his private zoo). The Greeks, on the other hand, viewed the giraffe as a legendary creature, the camelopard, believed to be the result of a camel mating with a leopard! Even today, the giraffe’s scientific name, Giraffa camelopardalis, is a nod to this ancient myth.
The Romans became more familiar with giraffes after some were captured and sent to Rome, where they were kept as exotic pets for the Emperor and exhibited at the Circus Maximus. However, after that, giraffes disappeared from Europe until 1486, when a live one was gifted to Lorenzo de Medici in Florence. Interestingly, when the Chinese first encountered a giraffe in 1414, they thought it was a Qilin, a legendary creature from Chinese mythology. Even today, the word “kirin” is used to refer to giraffes in several Asian countries. (Fun fact: giraffes once lived in Asia and even in Europe during prehistoric times!).
6. Takin
In the famous Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason is sent on a dangerous mission by his evil uncle Pelias: to acquire the Golden Fleece. The fleece came from a semi-divine ram named Chrysomallus, fathered by Poseidon himself. Some experts believe the legend of the Golden Fleece was inspired by the golden fur of a real animal, now known as the Golden Takin. This animal inhabits the Himalayas. Although described by Western scientists in 1850, the Takin has long been surrounded by mystery; in Bhutan, its origins are said to be supernatural. According to legend, in the 15th century, a wise and powerful Lama visited the country and was asked by his followers to perform a miracle.
Eventually, the Lama agreed and instructed his followers to bring him a whole goat and a whole cow. They complied, and the Lama, to everyone’s astonishment, devoured all the meat from the goat and cow, leaving nothing but bones. But the miracle wasn’t just the meal itself. After finishing his unlikely feast, the Lama took the parts of the goat and cow and magically reassembled them into a new animal. With a snap of his fingers, he brought the creature to life. The strange new animal was the Takin. Due to this remarkable legend, the Takin is a revered creature in Bhutan, where it is considered the national animal.
5. Python
Today, we often picture dragons as dinosaur-like creatures, but ancient historians actually described them as massive serpents that killed their prey by coiling around them and crushing them to death. Isidore of Seville wrote that the ‘dragon’ was the largest type of serpent, while Pliny the Elder depicted epic battles between the constricting dragon and the elephant. According to Pliny, the dragon would wrap around the elephant and strangle it, but when the elephant collapsed, it would crush the dragon under its immense weight. Pliny also mentioned that dragons were found in Ethiopia, though the largest ones were said to be in India.
In the 8th century AD, St. John of Damascus remarked, ‘I am not saying that dragons do not exist; they do. They are serpents born from other serpents. When young, they are small, but as they mature, they grow to such enormous sizes that they surpass all other serpents in length and girth. It is said that they can reach thirty cubits or more and become as thick as a giant log.’ This description clearly aligns with pythons, which kill by constriction and are the largest snakes in the Old World, reaching lengths of 8 to 9 meters or more. They also inhabit Ethiopia and India. In essence, pythons and dragons are the same! The name ‘Python’ comes from a legendary dragon from Greek mythology, so powerful that only the sun god Apollo could defeat it. While pythons were sometimes captured and sent to Rome for exhibitions in ancient times, they maintained their mythical status for centuries.
4. Giant squid
The Kraken, one of the most well-known mythical sea monsters, was said to possess enormous tentacles capable of sinking ships. Legends of this fearsome creature were told in Norway and Iceland, and modern scientists now believe that these stories were inspired by sightings of the giant squid (Architeuthis). Since the giant squid typically resides in deep ocean waters, it’s rarely seen alive by humans. However, dead specimens sometimes wash ashore, and the creature has been documented since ancient times. Pliny the Elder even mentioned them in his Natural History and claimed they could grow to lengths of up to 9.1 meters (though we now know they can grow even larger!).
In addition to the Kraken legend, the giant squid may have also inspired other classic myths, such as the Greek tale of Scylla, a multi-headed monster that snatched sailors from their ships and devoured them. Even the ‘sea serpents’ that strangled Laocoön and his sons in the Iliad might trace their origins to the giant squid. Although Aristotle and Pliny the Elder reported encounters with the creature, their descriptions were so fantastical that even later scientists had difficulty accepting their existence. In 1861, the crew of the Alecton dispatch steamer had a close encounter with a giant squid, even managing to capture a piece of its tail. However, their claims were ridiculed by scientists, who argued that such a creature defied ‘the laws of nature’. Even today, the giant squid retains an air of legend. We know it exists, yet it has been called ‘the most elusive image in Natural History’. It wasn’t until 2004 that the giant squid was finally photographed in its natural habitat, and the first video footage wasn’t captured until two years later.
3. Tiger
The tiger is one of the most iconic animals worldwide, but this wasn’t always the case. In ancient Greece, the tiger was considered a mythical creature, known as the manticore (from the Persian ‘martya’, meaning ‘man’, and ‘xwar’, meaning ‘eater’). This creature was described in ‘Indika’, a treatise by Ctesias about India that was once widely read among Greek historians and naturalists, though it is now lost. Pausanias, in his ‘Description of Greece’, states: ‘The beast described by Ctesias in his Indian history, which he says is called mantichoras by the Indians and man-eater by the Greeks, I am inclined to believe is the tiger. But that it has three rows of teeth on each jaw and spikes at the tip of its tail, which it uses both as a defense mechanism in close quarters and as projectiles to strike distant foes, all of which, I think, is a false story passed down by the Indians due to their excessive fear of the beast.’
It seems quite plausible that the tiger was the inspiration for the manticore. The manticore was said to live in India and Southeast Asia (the tiger’s native range) and was described as lion-like in size and appearance, but with reddish fur. It was also said to have the tail of a scorpion, which could have been inspired by the black rings and black tip of a tiger’s tail. The manticore was reputed to be so fierce that it would abduct adult men from villages, dragging them into the jungle, after which they were never seen again. This was a fate often attributed to the tiger as well.
Although tigers were frequently seen in Ancient Roman circuses, they vanished from European sight for centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, becoming little more than a myth. In medieval bestiaries, fantastical tales of tigers persisted; some of these stories told of hunters who would steal tiger cubs, and when the adult tiger pursued them, they would throw a mirror or crystal ball. The tiger would either stop to admire its own reflection or mistake it for its cub and abandon the chase. Tigers were also famed for their speed; the name ‘tigris’, from which the word ‘tiger’ originates, is the ancient Persian word for ‘arrow’.
2. Beaked whale
The Ziphius, or ‘Sea Owl’, was a legendary sea monster described in medieval times, said to have enormous eyes and a beak-like mouth, which earned it its name. This creature was believed to be of immense size, capable of sinking a ship if provoked, though it was also extremely elusive. Modern scientists now think that the mythical Sea Owl was inspired by the little-known beaked whales. These enigmatic cetaceans resemble giant dolphins but are not closely related. They inhabit deep waters and are rarely seen at the surface (although, like all whales, they must surface to breathe). Most of our knowledge of them comes from specimens washed ashore.
Some species of beaked whale are known only from carcasses or bones found on remote beaches! In honor of the mythical creature, one species of beaked whale is named Ziphius by scientists. Beaked whales deserve their place on this list because, while they were once fully mythical, they are still somewhat mysterious today. Scientists would eagerly pursue more knowledge about these giant creatures, but the ‘Sea Owl’ remains unwilling to reveal its secrets.
1. Komodo dragon
It is sometimes said that the Komodo dragons were first discovered by a World War I pilot who, after being stranded on a remote Indonesian island, reported seeing enormous reptiles along the coast. Unfortunately, no one believed his account. Other versions suggest that the dragons had already been rumored to exist, and as stories of ‘land crocodiles’ and ‘prehistoric monsters’ roaming the islands of Komodo and nearby areas continued to spread, they became too widespread to ignore. In 1910, a Dutch lieutenant set out to gather proof of the creature’s existence. He succeeded, sending a photograph and the skin of a massive lizard to Bogor, Java, where it was formally identified by the director of the Zoological Museum for the first time.
In 1926, a highly publicized expedition to Komodo led to the capture of two live Komodo dragons. This journey inspired the making of one of the most iconic films ever, King Kong, which also featured prehistoric creatures found on a distant island. The director even hoped to include Komodo dragons in the movie! However, this proved impossible, and the dragons were replaced by animated dinosaurs. Today, Komodo dragons are the largest lizards in the world. A modern myth surrounding these creatures is that they do not possess venom, and that their prey dies from blood poisoning caused by the deadly bacteria in the dragon’s saliva. While it is true that Komodo dragons carry harmful bacteria in their mouths, recent studies suggest that they also produce a potent venom capable of inducing hemorrhage and paralysis, making them the largest venomous creatures on the planet.
