We've had a lot of fun in the past with medieval bestiaries, full of inaccurate depictions of animals. This was a result of world travelers who brought stories back to Europe of the amazing animals they encountered. Artists tried to recreate these animals from their descriptions, but were not all that successful. Those travelers could have been inadequate describers, or the animals they spoke of could have just been so far out of the artists' experience that they couldn't do the subject justice. If a witness had actually tried to sketch out the creatures they'd seen, the artist's finished product may have been more accurate, but for some reason, that wasn't a thing. As it was, medieval artists always seemed to start with a dog and add features they were told about, at least for land animals. For sea creatures, they started with a fish and added what they were told.
But that's not all that's going on in this video. We also learn about some weird myths these exotic creatures became burdened with. Who knew you could distract a tiger mother with a mirror? Or that pelican babies ate their parents? -via Laughing Squid
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ya i'm not sure if those drawings line up with the actual animals. What I mean is, how can we be sure the original artists were definitely drawing the animals the youtuber says they were drawing. I duno.
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It's obvious that these artists had never seen such animals but it would make sense that if someone described an animal to an artist that they would do their best to represent something only through another person's perception. Sort of like trying to describe the color blue to a blind person, I imagine.
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