Name A Mythical Animal That Is Represented By Its Own Rare Xingyiquan Form?

1. Kraken

Maritime lore is filled with tales of savage sea serpents and scaly-skinned fish men, but few creatures of the deep have struck fear into sailors' hearts like the mighty kraken. Tracing its origins dorsum to a giant fish from Norse mythology called the hafgufa, the kraken first entered popular sociology every bit a titanic octopus or squid spotted by fishermen off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. One 18th century business relationship past Bishop Erik Pontoppidan described it equally a squid-like creature so large that when whatsoever part of its trunk stuck out of the water it resembled a floating island. The kraken supposedly used its many tentacles to ensnare ships' masts and elevate them to the icy depths, only it could too create a deadly whirlpool merely by submerging itself underwater.

Tales of the kraken's wrath might be embellished, but the animate being itself is not entirely fanciful. The legend may have been inspired by sightings of actual giant squid, and some paleontologists take argued that the prehistoric oceans were once dwelling house to 100-pes-long cephalopods that fed on whale-sized Ichthyosaurs.

2. Griffin

An intimidating blend of ii different predators, the griffin was said to possess the torso and dorsum legs of a panthera leo as well every bit the wings, beak and talons of a hawk or hawkeye. Tales of the flying behemoths nearly likely originated in the Middle East, but they later became a popular motif in ancient Greek literature. The griffin legend was subsequently picked up in the 14th century in a largely fictional travelogue by Sir John Mandeville, who described the creatures as "more strong than eight lions" and "a hundred eagles." Griffins were revered for their intelligence and dedication to monogamy—they supposedly mated for life—only they could besides be ferocious. The beasts ripped flesh with their razor precipitous talons, and they were also known to fly their victims to groovy heights before dropping them to their deaths.

According to researcher Adrienne Mayor, legends of the griffin could be inspired by early encounters with dinosaur fossils. Scythian nomads in cardinal Asia may have stumbled across the bones of the dinosaur protoceratops and mistook them for a bird-like creature, resulting in the myth of a terrifying flight beast.

three. Manticore

One of the nearly forbidding of all mythical creatures, the manticore was a bloodthirsty quadruped that supposedly sported the caput of a blue-eyed homo, the auburn body of a lion and the stinging tail of a scorpion. The legend of this mortiferous hybrid first began with Greek authors such as Ctesias, who chronicled it in a volume virtually Republic of india. Ctesias and others described the manticore as having iii rows of teeth like a shark and a tuneful bellow that sounded similar a trumpet. Most terrifying of all, it had an insatiable appetite for homo flesh. Afterwards using its blistering speed to chase down its casualty, the beast was said to slash at them with its claws or sting them with its tail earlier devouring them bones and all. Co-ordinate to Ctesias, the manticore was even capable of paralyzing or killing its victims from a altitude by firing stingers from its tail "as if from a bow."

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4. Basilisk

Accounts of the fearsome basilisk appointment back to the commencement century Roman writer Pliny the Elder, whose famous "Natural History" included entries on fantastical creatures and exotic races of plain-featured men. Pliny described the basilisk as a serpent-like animal with markings on its head that resembled a crown, merely by the Centre Ages it had morphed into a fiendish ophidian with the head of a rooster and the wings of a dragon or bat. The basilisk was said to possess a deadly bite and venomous breath, but it could also impale a man simply past looking at him. Would-be basilisk hunters countered this decease stare past conveying mirrors in the hope that the creature would meet its own gaze and drop expressionless, just they also enlisted the assist of weasels, which were believed to be immune to its poisonous substance.

The basilisk supposedly originated in North Africa, but tales of European encounters with it are plant throughout the Centre Ages. 1 peculiarly dubious account from 1587 in Poland describes how a man clad in a mirror-covered leather suit hunted and captured a basilisk later it killed two small girls and a nursemaid.

5. Blemmyae

Along with legends of grotesque monsters and sea creatures, ancient and medieval travelers often returned to Europe with tales of so-called "wild men" living in the unmapped regions of Asia and Africa. One of the most unusual groups was the Blemmyae, a race of hairy primitives who lacked heads but had a face situated in their upper body. The tribe showtime appeared in Herodotus's "The Histories," where they were described as a species of "headless men" from Due north Africa "who have their eyes in their chests."

References to the Blemmyae or creatures similar them later cropped up in writings by Pliny the Elder, the reports of Sir Walter Raleigh and even in Shakespeare's "Othello." Their exotic appearance served as an object of both fascination and disgust for Europeans, and they became a common motif in sociology and art in the pre-Enlightenment era. Other famous "wild men" included the Sciopodes, who had a single leg with a foot then large it could double as a parasol; the cannibalistic Anthropophagi; and the Cynocephali, a race of creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of dogs.

6. Roc

A popular myth amongst travelers and merchants, the roc was a giant bird of casualty rumored to be so potent that it could snatch an elephant from the ground. Stories of the giant fowls originated in Arabic fairytales and mythology before making their fashion to the West in accounts by travelers like Marco Polo, who noted that the roc'south preferred hunting method was to drib its victims from mortiferous heights and then "prey upon the carcass."

The Moroccan wanderer Ibn Batutta later on wrote that he once confused a roc for a floating mountain considering of its size, and other legends stated that its wingspan—typically described as being about 50 feet—was so huge that it could blot out the sun. Researchers accept since suggested that the roc legend may be partially inspired by sightings of so-called "elephant birds," a species of massive, flightless birds that existed in Madagascar until equally recently as the 17th century.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/6-mythical-monsters

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