Many legendary creatures may have surprisingly ordinary origins rooted in misunderstood animals and fossils. The basilisk likely emerged from exaggerated descriptions of cobras, whose upright posture ...

As a Potterhead, there’s nothing you can teach me about mythical creatures, magic, and fantasy. But it turns out the many creatures of Hogwarts are just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s look at 17 of the ...

Journey to the West’s most well known character is arguably Sun Wukong, the monkey king who joins the monk on his pilgrimage to retrieve sacred buddhist texts in the Chinese novel. For English ...

The Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), also called the Asian tapir or Indian tapir, is the largest of the five species of tapir and the only one native to Asia. Rare/endangered animal. The tapir is ...

Some of the wildest legends may actually be rooted in reality. Ancient people didn’t have science textbooks, just bones in the dirt and stories passed around the fire, and sometimes, those stories ...

The Jigoku-zoshi (“Handscrolls of Buddhist Hell”) is a Japanese scroll from the late 12th century that graphically depicts naked, horrified monks running away from bands of vicious, animal-headed ...

According to Celtic and Norse mythology, selkies are seals who can become human by shedding their "sealskin" on land. Anyone ...