Video Animals Humans Once Believe They Existed

The human imagination is astounding. People have been telling stories and legends since the beginning of time and many of those legends are still thriving even in today’s skeptical, modern world. Here are some of the most interesting animals that humans once believed existed.

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3. Dragons
Sorry to anyone who was hoping to someday get a Drogon, Rhaegal, or Viserion of their own--dragons have not been proven to exist because they’re not real. Probably. But dragons have been part of a collective mythology since approximately 4,000 BC. The exact details of the giant beasts vary from culture to culture and dozens of cultures have created a dragon mythos.

In Chinese tradition, the dragon is a symbol of the seasons. They are often associated with water and their habitats are said to be rivers, oceans, and waterfalls. The Chinese dragon is distinguishable by its serpentine body, which is more elongated and sinuous than the Western interpretations. In Asian cultures, Dragons are a symbol of wisdom, good fortune, and benevolence and are constantly in opposition to the Tiger. Dragons are respected, powerful, but kind, which explains how they became a symbol of Imperial leaders.

2. Sirens
Sirens take all kinds of forms, but they have one thing in common: they are beautiful. The common thread almost anywhere you find sirens in literature or legend is that they are seductresses--though they often play coy and innocent. Most often, they are depicted playing some kind of instrument, a lute in classical paintings, and singing. It is their voice which catches the attention of passing sailors, but their supernatural beauty which ultimately lures in unsuspecting victims.

In Greek mythology, sirens are half-bird, half-woman creatures. They have the body and wings of a bird, but the face of a woman and use their voices to lure sailors perilously close to jagged cliffs or tempt them to jump overboard entirely. The most famous instance of sirens is found in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus ties himself to the mast of his ship to hear the sirens’ song, but forces his crew to stop their ears with beeswax. Some say that the sirens were so distraught that someone had heard their song and lived that they disappeared forever.

Depictions of sirens changed over time. Their form became more humanlike as the bird bodies were lost and replaced with the torso of a woman and just the legs of a bird. However, a lot of people associate sirens with mermaids. They are actually two entirely different myths, but at some point they began to merge. Mermaids were beautiful half-woman, half-fish creature who would often mingle with sailors and even bear children like Achilles. They were never known for their singing voices and are kind, loving creatures who are often heartbroken when their landlocked lovers cannot follow them into the sea. However, in modern culture, mermaids have been depicted as siren-like. Think of Ariel’s singing voice or the merpeople of Black Lake at Hogwarts.

1. Vegetable Lamb
It doesn’t get much cuter than the vegetable lamb of Tartary. It goes by many different names including Barometz and the Scythian Lamb, but no matter what you call it, it’s the most adorable mythical creature out there. The myth is believed to have begun because of the cotton plant, which has tufts of white cotton balancing on its stems when it’s ready to harvest.

No matter how it begun, it ended up with two variations. One legends says that the lamb is actually the fruit of the plants from which it grows. The plant would mature and drop melon-like seeds, which were actually housing lambs. The second variation says that the lamb would grow attached to the plant, whose stem acted like an umbilical cord. The lamb would be able to roam, still attached to the plant, but would perish if it was ever separated from the stem. It would also expire when all the plants around it were eaten. After that, the lamb would fall from the plants like a ripe fruit and, according to legend, tasted like honey if it was eaten.

It’s difficult to say whether the vegetable lamb is actually an animal, because the legends blur the lines a bit. Supposedly, it was made of real bone and blood, but it did not have flesh. Instead, its flesh was made of leaves and plant material.

So, maybe it’s both? We’ll leave that debate to the vegans and vegetarians.