She is described by Homer as having a crab-like shell, twelve feet hanging from her horrific body, six necks, three rows of teeth on each of her heads. One of the stranger sounding sea monsters is Scylla, who appears in The Odyssey. As Greece is made up of multiple islands and the Greeks were seafarers this is no great surprise. ScyllaĪ large number of the creatures in Greek mythology are sea monsters. The description is so bizarre that it is difficult to picture how the aetaerne must have looked, but some people have suggested they may have been nothing more than antelopes. They killed several of his men with the bony, saw-like protuberances which sprouted from their heads. The aetarnae were mentioned in the travels of Alexander the Great. With a huge number of bizarre creatures in the Greek myths and legends, it takes a lot to be a candidate for “weirdest creature”, but the aeternae are one of the contenders for the title. Its front half was a bit more complicated – it could use its arms to run on all fours, but its front legs became arms which could pluck and carry items if it needed. The onocentaur was described as having the hind legs of a donkey. Pythagoras and later Aelian both described the onocentaur as having a wild and violent temper and being completely untamable. It is still part human, but the other part is donkey. The onocentaur is the less glamourous cousin of the centaur. The horned viper, a snake which can have hornlike lumps over its eyes and ambushes its prey is thought to be the inspiration, though the real life cerastes can’t kill anything as big as its legendary counterpart. The cerastes is one creature in the Greek myths that is thought to be based on a real animal. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote about the cerastes and described them as ambush predators. They were said to be totally boneless and to have a large pair of horns, similar to rams’ horns. (Jastrow / Public Domain ) CerastesĬerastes, which translates to “horned”, were a type of serpent in Greek legend. Heracles killing the Stymphalian birds with his sling. As if that wasn’t enough, they also had sharp bronze beaks and their droppings were said to be poisonous. The birds were supposedly man-eating with blade like metallic feathers which they could launch at their targets. They get their name from their supposed location – a swamp in the real-life location of Stymphalia. (Mantichore / CC BY-SA 4.0 ) Stymphalian Birdsīest known as being the sixth labor of Heracles, Stymphalian birds are a fearsome sounding bird from Greek mythology. The Real Story of Medusa and the GorgonsĮchidna a Scythian Dracaena. ![]()
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