5 Mythical Creatures That (Kinda) Actually Existed | Answers With Joe

We know a lot about the universe and the world around us, but we also keep learning new things all the time, like did you know that we've only explored five percent of the oceans and we're still finding new species every year? In fact, last year in 2020, the California Academy of Sciences added 213 new species of plants and animals to its tree of life. They include 101 ants, 22 crickets, 15 fish, 11 geckos, 11 sea slugs, 11 flowering plants, eight beetles, eight fossil econoderms, seven spiders, five snakes, two skinks, two aphids, two eels and one moss. a frog, a fossil amphibian, a seahorse, a fossil scallop, a sea biscuit, a fossil sea lily, a coral and a partridge in a pear tree.

Well, now imagine that you live in ancient times and you come across the skeletal remains of an animal and you didn't know what we know now about the different species of the world or maybe you heard about an animal thirdhand from some traveler; You're trying to make sense of what you're seeing or hearing with the limited amount of knowledge you have, so you do what humans are good at. You justify, you create a story, you develop a myth, you find a reason for this to look the way it does and that's not necessarily a bad thing to give you. comfort or entertainment or religious guidance or moral support the legends and myths we have built around

mythical

creatures

have a purpose or at least once did today we can easily take a look and try to figure out exactly what they were Look and Creating these myths around this is not only fun and interesting, it also helps us understand cultures around the world and gives us a little insight into what makes humans the way we are.

For this episode, I want to look at

mythical

beasts that were based on real-life animals, and in some cases, real-life animals that were once considered mythical beasts, so some of these animals were totally legit animals that we know very well. well today and others perhaps were simply conjured after seeing some skeletons. There are a few skeletons left and an infinite imagination can go a long way and I'm going to rate them on what I call the underwear scale in the sense that an old pair of underwear stretches a lot while a new pair of underwear can stretch a lot. a little tighter so basically the more stretched out the explanation is the older the underwear you get because science the first creature on our list is dragons daenerys road a king ghidorah fought godzilla puff was magical yeah let's talk about dragons those mythical beasts that fill our fairy tales and fantasies, curiously almost all cultures around the world have some type of legend about dragons in their history, the first appearances arose in Mesopotamian and Greek writings, for example, the moosh kashu is a scaly dragon with feline features. four legs eagle claws and hind legs a tail a long neck a head with horns and a serpentine tongue that appears at the gate of ishtar in the city of Babylon from the 6th century BC. in the bible there is a leviathan a sea serpent that spits fire from its mouth King Agamemnon and the Iliad are a blue dragon on their shield because of their snake-like bodies.

Dragons are often perceived as representatives of evil or at least in the Middle Eastern and Western worlds, in some East Asian myths, dragons are benevolent

creatures

that represent heaven and masculinity. No matter what culture they appear in, dragons are almost always reptiles; anthropologist David Jones suggests in his book that dragon instinct is an amalgamation of three primary fears: snakes, predatory birds, and big cats. Now another mythological creature that includes two of those fears anyway is the griffin it is a mix of lion and eagle, it is often depicted with the hind legs, body and tail of a lion and the head of an eagle.

Some griffins have eagle wings and towns on their four legs, while others do not, as it was a part. king of all beasts and part king of all birds, he was a kind of king of all creatures. Griffins are found in mythologies around the world in the Middle East and Northern Europe and are known to guard treasures and tombs. Some legends say that its feathers. It can cure blindness, but if dragons and griffins were real, if you were a Scythian living near the Black Sea in ancient times, then yes, at least if you came across their skeletal remains, skeletal remains that today we would recognize as the bones of a protoceratops, the protoceratops was a sheep.

Similar sized herbivore from the Cretaceous period that would be very familiar to people like us who grew up in Jurassic Park, but if you were in ancient times and had no concept of deep time and no idea what dinosaurs were and you came across bones. that looked like this i could see it, i could see it at least that's the hypothesis put forward by adrienne mayer, a folklorist and historian of ancient science at stanford university, i mean, the modern field of paleontology is only a couple hundred years old. years, but those bones didn't appear 200 years ago, they've been there all this time, so yes, it's not unfeasible to think that someone in ancient times could have stumbled upon those bones and come to some pretty interesting conclusions, although not all of them are According to this hypothesis, as Dr.

Mark Whitton, who believed that the Greeks created their version of griffins from living animals and not fossils, Waden wrote in 2016 that the anatomies of living animals can easily explain all the elements of ancient representations of griffins, it does not seem necessary to invoke protoceratops as part of Anatomy of griffins. The widespread view that griffins are simply chambers of living animals must be considered a much simpler and therefore more likely interpretation of its shape, since whitewashed faucets were just a figment of our human imagination. There are other theories, such as that whale bones in the past may have also been mistaken for evidence of dragons before people knew what they were really looking at and then there are other animals like the Nile crocodile, which may have lived in a wider geographical area in ancient times.

It is the largest species of crocodile, with adults measuring up to six. meters long and weighs almost a ton he can also do what they call a high walk where he walks with his trunk raised off the ground and when he walks towards you when he lumbers towards you and towards some people you know, that could be interpreted as a type dragon, the gowana is a species of monitor lizard found in Australia. They are predators with sharp teeth and claws and can grow up to two meters long. They also have poison glands. They can climb trees and run quickly on their hind legs. legs, so it is believed that in Australia that could be a source of dragon folklore, finally there is another type of monitor lizard that could be a candidate for the source of dragon myths; in fact, it's considered such a likely possibility that, well, they

actually

called it a dragon.

The Komodo dragon in Indonesia is a top predator first discovered by Europeans in 1910. They are the largest living lizards in the world and can reach up to three meters in length and weigh an average of 70 kilograms. They have long tails, agile necks and forked tongues. in yellow, a couple of curious facts about the Komodo dragon, when threatened, it can vomit the contents of its stomach to reduce its weight and be able to flee. Komodos also cannibalize their young, so young komodos often roll in fecal matter and cover themselves in a smell that adult komodos are designed to avoid.

A cool dragon beast that spits vomit and smells like poop, but in terms On the underwear scale, how likely is it that dragons are based on living creatures? I'd probably say it fits pretty well, no big deal. It's a stretch considering there were legends of dragons all over the world and there are lizards all over the world, so I'd say maybe like new boxer briefs. Next up is the Cyclops which singer Shev Wooley had a hit on. 1958 with a song about a cyclops, specifically about a flying, one-eyed, one-horned purple people-eater, who came to earth and wanted to join a rock band and Ziggy Stardust thought he was the first alien rock star to You don't even eat people.

Ziggy does better, by the way, I've always wondered if he's a purple people eater or a purple people eater, because if it was the latter, he probably would have been very hungry unless he found the few doors Kentucky blues, some cyclops fish appear. In Greek mythology, most notably by Homer and the poet Hissid in Homer's Odyssey, the hero of the story Odysseus encounters a Cyclops named Polyphemus, who is the son of Poseidon, Polyphemus lives in a cave, raises sheep and He eats men in the story, devouring several of Odysseus's men before. the hero and the rest of his crew escape using trickery and wine, you know that old trick of getting someone drunk and then stabbing them in the eye that thing in the theogony of hessia the cyclops and the titans were descendants of gaia and uranus uranus stayed with all the children are imprisoned within gaia, but cronos, a titan, successfully overthrew their father with the help of the cyclops and their reward for helping cronos imprison the cyclops in the greek underworld, but then they helped zeus , the son of Cronus, to overthrow his father and become the supreme ruler of the cosmos.

I remember that in the soap opera one meaning of the word cyclops is circular eye and the creature is always represented as a person with only one eye in the center of the forehead, so it could be an animal that is responsible for the legend of the cyclops, like many ancient creatures, the Greeks. They understood their world through the construction of myths. If they found something in nature that they could not explain, they created a myth around it to explain how it came about and why the world is the way it is, according to Thomas Strasser, professor of ancient art. and archeology at providence college in an interview with national geographic citation the idea that mythology explains the natural world is an ancient idea the ancient greeks were farmers and would surely come across fossil bones like this and try to explain them without any concept of evolution. sense that they would reconstruct them in their minds as giant monsters, sphinxes, etc., that is the basis of a hypothesis about the cyclopes.

Austrian paleontologist Ethenio Abel came up with the idea in 1914 that the Greeks came up with the myth of the Cyclopes based on prehistoric data. dwarf elephant skulls why, because they look like this, they were first found on the islands of Crete, Cypress and Sicily, and they are about twice the size of a human skull, so it's easy, oh my goodness, yes Yes, I see it, I see it, that's not an eye socket, by the way, it's a nasal cavity essential to the trunk, but again, if you're an ancient Greek guy and you come across this in a cave somewhere place, I mean, yeah, I could understand why you'd think that after cleaning your toga.

Another possibility is dynatherium gigantium, whose fossils were also discovered in Crete. It was one of the world's largest animals to ever walk the Earth. It measures 4.6 meters tall at the shoulder and displays 1.3 meter long fangs. The animal is a distant relative of today's elephants. but unlike the modern elephant, the ethereum's downward-thrown screw protruded from its lower jaw and curved down and up instead of up and out, and it also had a cavity in its skull for its pronounced trunk or To paraphrase the woolly song, maybe that's where it was. playing rock and roll out of the hole in his head, so the underwear scale for this one, I mean, the cyclops is a Greek creature, a Greek myth and these bones were found on Greek islands and I can see that it looks like something that just keep an eye on it and yeah, I'm going to give this one some little things.

Next is the kraken. It could devour a ship's entire crew in one bite. It was 1600 meters long. It was so large that many crew members would mistake it for an island. and when it wanted to feed it gave off a strong, peculiar smell that could have simply been poop. I'm talking about crack and the largest, scariest ocean creature ever invented by man. The first known mention: the kraken comes from the royal sparrow in Norway in 1180 when he included it as one of several sea monsters lurking in the waters around Greenland and Norway, a 13th century Icelandic saga called orovar odor mentioned a mythical creature as well. called huff goofa with a description strikingly similar to the kraken and eventually the kraken myth.

It became increasingly terrifying Carlinius, the father of modern taxonomy, even included it in his first edition of Systema Nature in 1735. Then, in 1853, an animal washed ashore on a Danish beach. The Japanese naturalist with a burst of steam took the beak of the animal and scientifically described it as a giant squid. The archetypal ducks, theSquids are one of four types of cephalopods that are considered very intelligent. You know what else is smart? My previous episode on cephalopods is simply a writing phenomenon. It's so good that Aaron Sorkin did, that Aaron Sorkin called me. after watching it and saying that he was no longer going to do the master class on him because after watching that video he knew that he was a fake writer, whoever wrote that episode is simply the best writer of all time.

However, I had to put Aaron on hold. because i got a call from phoebe wallerbridge who wanted to take the same idea and turn it into a movie or maybe a limited series about a squid who helps a detective solve marine crimes and call him the crack on the case, i'll put the cephalopod. episode link in the description below if you want to watch it and yes, Jason also wrote this script, so the giant squid was the creature that these sailors had mythologized all those years ago based on its size, probably because it's not just the giant squid that is quite large but are also rarely seen, which helps build the myth around them.

The largest giant squid ever documented by scientists was 13 meters long and probably weighed more than a ton, and because they live mainly in the lowest depths of the ocean, where there is very little light down there they have giant eyes. They measure 30 centimeters long. wide They have eyes the size of saucers in 2005 two Japanese researchers photographed narcotis swimming at a depth of 900 meters off the Oge Sawara Islands in the North Pacific Ocean and in 2012 oceanographer Witter filmed the first images of a giant squid in its natural habitat It was absolutely stunning and if this animal had had its feeding tentacles intact and fully extended, it would have been as tall as a two-story house, but like I said at the beginning of this video, only five percent of the ocean. has been explored, so the crunch could be explained as a giant squid or maybe something bigger is going on down there.

By the way, there is another species of squid called a colossal squid that has more mass than a giant squid but is not as long. a giant squid in terms of the scale of the underwear on this one is quite tight I think this one is quite enclosed and aquatic so speedos next are gorillas Africa is a huge continent it has tall and small creatures and we are still finding others new All the time and in the past there were stories of this huge hairy, human-like creature with a bad temper, that European explorers would return to Europe and revel in stories of this crazy beast that they found in the jungles of Africa.

The public would ooh and aah and the scientists would simply dismiss the story as nonsense. This creature was the gorilla. The first gorilla sighting reported from outside Africa was from Hanoi. The navigator, a Carthaginian explorer of the 5th century, after reaching a bay called the Horn of the Sea. To the south he found an island populated by what he called savages, supposedly his crew tried to chase them but they could not catch any because the males could climb to the trees and threw rocks at the crew they

actually

could. to catch some females who bit and scratched them, but over time they behaved well to each other and they all lived happily ever after.

No, of course, they skinned and killed the gorillas and took their skins to Carthage. The next known sighting took place. It took place in the 16th century, when British explorer Andrew Battell visited parts of West Africa and described the animals as hairy, human-like monsters that were completely vegetarian, but Western scientists still considered the gorilla a myth until mid 19th century when american doctor and missionary thomas s savage found some gorilla bones in liberia and sent them back home. He teamed up with Jeffrey's Wyman, who was an anatomist at Harvard, to examine the bones in more detail and then presented their findings to the Boston Natural History Society in 1847.

The scientific name they gave was troglodytes gorilla, which was a species in a nod to the discovery of Hano in the 5th century because the word gorilla in Greek means tribe of hairy women. It would be another decade before Paul di cherub became the first. European explorer to see a live gorilla, but yes, there once was gorillas that a cryptozoological thing were on the same level as the sasquatch, which is something sasquatch enthusiasts love to point out. I also feel like you have to keep in mind that gorillas were just a myth to Europeans, the native Africans who lived there were very aware of their existence, so if I'm going to put this on an underwear scale, I mean no. can be tighter than that we know it's a real thing so I mean thong and last but not least it's a saino safali the andaman islands are located in the bay of bengal in the northeast of the indian ocean and according to the explorer marco polo a curious creature lived on the islands essay written in his essay travel quote I assure you that all The men of this Umagandian island have heads like dogs and teeth and eyes the same way, in fact, on their faces, They are all like big mastiff dogs.

He described them as living on meat, rice and milk and that they would eat everyone who came. Interestingly, he was not the only person to describe a race of dog-headed people around 400 BC. C., the Greek physician Cesius, who also wrote about unicorns, wrote about men and women in India, whose clothing is the skin of wild beasts and who bark like dogs Herodotus claimed to have seen them in Libya. Alexander the Great said that he fought against them in India. Pliny the Elder included them in his natural history book writing that quote. They live by hunting and capturing birds.

The Chinese Buddhist missionary Hui Shen said that he saw them. on an island east of Fusang in 499 AD. and according to legend, Saint Christopher was a man with a dog's head who wanted to be human and finally got his wish, so what the hell was madness? What creature could have inspired this? The idea is that they could have been baboons or macaques whose long faces give them a dog-like appearance. Another theory suggested by Bernard Huevelmans in his 1955 book on the trail of unknown animals is that in Africa they may have been baboons or macaques anyway. It must be from sightings of an injured lemur, the injury is a large species of lemur and he suggested they might resemble a tiny human with a large dog-like head.

In his book, he wrote a three-foot-tall quote without a tail, but with a discreet stump. The lesions are not. It has a striking resemblance to a man and a silhouette similar to that of other lemurs or half-monkeys. He has a thin, pointed snout that makes his head look more like that of a fox or a dog. He also speculated that the lion-tailed macaque or wanderer, as it is called, could explain the legends in India. Even Sir David Attenborough suggested that the lesion could be an explanation for the Safali sign in his 1961 documentary series In Search of the Zoo.

The proportions of his body with his very long legs were strangely human and I was reminded once again of Marco Polo's dog-headed men So yes, the ancient myths, they all come from somewhere and I must be honest, I didn't see some of them. these explanations when I started working on this video, these are just a few of them, of course, if there are any that you are a big fan of. which I didn't cover here, just talk about it in the comments below and there's a bonus version of this on nebula if you're subscribed there, so if you're like me, the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning you grab your phone and start to scroll and if you're like me 90 of what you scroll is hot garbage because the world is 90 hot garbage, there has to be a better way, wouldn't it be great if there was a service that summarized the day's information into quick and easy nuggets to digest that you could read and then start with your day.

There is exactly such a thing and that thing is today's sponsor. Morning Brew Morning Brew is a free daily newsletter. That's delivered to your inbox every Monday through Sunday, in other words, every day, but what about Felix Day? There is no flexible day. It only takes a few minutes and then you catch up on the latest technology and business news as well as interesting things. It's happening in the world. Did you know that there is now a fifth ocean? Yes, the ocean around Antarctica was officially labeled the Southern Ocean by National Geographic cartographers. It's actually the only ocean in the world that surrounds a continent and now I have something to talk about. my dad also the news is delivered in a very fun informal style, it's not at all heavy and boring like traditional news, it's more like the news is delivered by your favorite smart youtuber, if you know someone like that anyway, morning beer is fun, it's a nice little nerd brain tickler.

I've been enjoying it and it's free so you have absolutely nothing to lose, just click the link in the description to subscribe. Thanks to Morningbrew for supporting this video and a big shout out to Patreon supporters. the answer files on patreon and the youtube members who are helping to keep the lights on around here by helping me grow a team forming an amazing community. I love you guys. There are some new people I need to mention real quick. We have Paul Wheeler. e larson lockheed davies liz walliston john topherfer robert anderson matej sliny shane schler john b leonard nervous the bombastic space ninja i love him improvised apollo uh cornelia rincey connor edwards lynn beatz anthony evershed and ben peterson thank you all so much if you want to join them get early access to videos, exclusive live streams and just join a cool community, you can go to patreon.com

answers

with joe t-shirts available in store in the store

answers

with joe.com I don't yell at them enough, I really should They're funny, they're cool, they look, people start talking to you, you make friends just by wearing a t-shirt and you support the channel, so go watch it, like and share this video if you liked it and if it's the first one. time here and you think you might want to learn more about random things.

Google thinks you can like this random thing or you can watch any of the videos that have my face in them if you like what I'm saying. I invite you to subscribe because I'm back with videos every Monday and that's all for now, you guys go out, have an eye-opening break the rest of the week, stay safe and I'll see you next Monday. I love you, take care.