#miscellaneous creatures

[plaguedocboi]

top 5 little guys (interpret that as you will)

1. Barbados threadsnake. Illegally small. How dare u

2. Any of the genus Mini (Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature).

3. Pocket shark. Why

4. Baby marlin. I don’t care that it grows up into a huge creature, just look at it. Bask in its glory

5. Bee hummingbird. This thing is a species of dinosaur. Absurd

[arethinn]

Wild Waves by Himmis on DeviantArt

[arethinn]

In a broad sense they could be considered "of Faërie", that is, considering that to mean the whole conceptual area of of myth-magic writ large; the meaning of "faerie" that refers to just about anything enchanted, rather than to a specific realm or "dimension" and its denizens. Usually though they would be considered "mythical creatures" and not fae per se.

Are heraldic beasts considered fae?... Totally asking for a friend haha.

[bestiarium]

The Getulian Dog [miscellaneous]

In the mid-17th century, Edward Topsell published a treatise on the animal kingdom in which he described many creatures: both real animals and some fictional beings that got mixed up in his research. And some whose existence is not entirely clear: one of these is the Getulian dog, also called the ‘mimick dog’, a curious canine breed with a remarkable talent for imitating everything it sees.

He classified this dog as Canis lucernarius (which, in modern biological terminology, would make it a species closely related to wolves and not a breed of dog). They have a black head resembling that of a hedgehog and the intelligence of an ape. Their legs are particularly long and support a somewhat short, curved body with a short tail and shaggy fur. Curiously, at least some of these dogs were supposedly raised by apes.  

The name ‘Getulian dog’ would imply that these animals hailed from Getulia in northern Africa, but it's unclear whether these stories are fiction or just exaggerated tales of a real dog breed. In the 3rd century B.C., these animals were popular in Egypt, where people trained them to perform tricks. They were so smart that people who could not afford human servants would often train Getulian dogs to perform household tasks.

As they are highly intelligent, these dogs have supposedly been used in theatre and plays since ancient times. According to the ancient historian Plutarchus, one of these trained dogs performed in a public spectacle attended by the emperor Vespasianus (so in the first century A.D.). In the play, a character murdered the dog by feeding him a piece of poisoned bread, and the dog perfectly played the part by pretending to stumble down and die. After this scene the dog stood back up, alive and unharmed, to the joy and amazement of the audience.

As a closing statement, I like this story because most of the myths and tales I read are about man-eating monsters and vengeful deities. But this story is just ‘this one dog was trained for a theatre play and he was really good at it!’

Source: Topsell, E., 1658, the History of Four-footed Beasts, Serpents, and Insects. Describing at large their true and lively figure, their several names, conditions, kinds, virtues (both Natural and Medicinal), countries of their breed, their love and hatred to mankind, and the wonderful work of God in their creation, preservation and destruction., printed by E. Cotes, London, p.127-128, 1098 pp. (image source: Edward Topsell, History of Four-footed beasts, 1658)

[autumnillustration]

“It’s happening again. In our lifetime, it’s happening again.”

Just some more appropriate angst for ‘The Sharpshooter and the Vet’—WWI AU of acgas 2020

[bee-sidebranch]

devious wyrms

[lemonxlimee]

Being autism is weird

I'm just enjoying myself and then

[intersexnateriver]

i don't think that femnear and regular near would look different at all. but i wanted to give her some changes anyways so she has pigtails. and a skirt in the full image under the cut

like and subscribe for more atrocious death note genderbends or whatever

[autistic-beanmonster2]

What are dragons technically speaking?

a dragon is anything you want it to be babygirl 😍

[beagleamarelo-moved]

Welcome to Miscellandia, the land of all miscellaneous things! 🌳🌼🐛

Henri and Caroline are exploring the forest and gathering data about every kind of species they find. They're building a digital encyclopedia that will be available to other villagers through their own kind of wireless data sharing!

---

I'm reposting this on here after I deleted the post some weeks ago :'0 I noticed that you guys on here like my creatures and animals art, so here's more of it! :D

[celestite-caroline]

went a little different this time and I drew some mutuals' OCs (namely @cyzebra26 's kelpies and my boyfriend's Virion) interacting with some of mine :D

[bestiarium]

The Magdeburg unicorn [Bad paleontological reconstruction; miscellaneous]

I have a different kind of creature this week, because it's April 1st!

In 1663, quarry workers excavated a bunch of odd skeletons near Quedlinburg, Germany. Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg at the time and also a local scientist, identified the reconstructed creature as a ‘unicorn’ in his report in 1678. The creature had a slightly curved horn of 5 ellen (about 2.3m) long. Otto also mentioned that the remains were damaged due to the clumsy removal of the bones by the quarry workers.

In truth, the workers had found the remains of Pleistocene animals, including the front legs of a mammoth, what appears to be a woolly rhinoceros skull and either the tooth of a narwhal or an elephant tusk. The bones are not identified with 100% certainty because the reconstruction became lost to time.

Forty years later, another unicorn horn had been found (this one was actually the tusk of a straight-tusked elephant). Several respected scientists (including Gottfried Leibniz) would eventually confirm that these were indeed the remains of a unicorn. In 1714, Valentine published his somewhat clumsy attempt at a reconstruction of what he believed to be a fossilized unicorn. If palaeontologists or paleobiologists at the time had any theories about the ecology of the creature, they might have been lost to time, as I couldn’t find anything about it. Going by the contemporary illustrations, perhaps the Einhorn might have been assumed to hop around like a kangaroo, or maybe it was a slow walker, dragging its tail behind it.

The Museum für Naturkunde in Magdeberg currently displays the famous model of the reconstruction (a double reconstruction, if you will, for the original reconstruction got lost). Today, the ‘Guericke Einhorn’ is widely used as a textbook example of a bad paleontological reconstruction, though in Guericke’s defense, the mistake wasn’t as obvious back in the 17th century as it is today. Several unusual bones were found closely together and were incorrectly assumed to be part of a singular, puzzling animal, as Guericke obviously didn’t have access to the current knowledge about each of the Einhorn’s component animals.

The Sewecken Hills area actually has a very rich Pleistocene fossil record – the Lampe collection being famously catalogued by Alfred Nehring in 1904 – but at least for the time being, unicorn fossils remain absent from this list.

Sources: Diedrich, C. G., 2021, Unicorn ‘Holotype’ skeleton from the Late Pleistocene spotted hyena den site Sewecken-Berge (Germany), Acta Zoologica, 104(1), pp.1-70. Van Kolfschoten, T., 2021, The woolly rhinoceros from Seweckenberge near Quedlinburg (Germany), in: S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser, O. Jöris, The Beef behind all Possible Pasts, pp. 39-48. DOI:10.11588/propylaeum.868.c11306 (image 1: image on the left: a 2011 redrawing by Elke Grönig of Leibnitz’ 1749 illustration. Right: 2012 drawing by George Teichmann based on the famous reconstruction) (image source 2: Reddit user and_so_forth)

[darkfictionjude]

*nia and imre: 👁👄👁

can't believe i fucked an ask the fuck??

Oh I fuck up everything so it’s fine 😌

[hiddencarpet]

Having fun with a bit of some thin lines :)

[bee-sidebranch]

alone at night