On April , , an expedition led by James Cook (–) on board HM Bark Endeavour came in sight of the Australian coast. When the expedition scientists went ashore and began to examine the fl ora and fauna, they discovered species that were entirely unknown in Europe.
Th ey met the kangaroo, giving it the name local people used when the scientists asked them what they called the animal. In the years that followed, as more and more specimens of the Australian fauna
arrived back in London, it became evident that although the species were new, they were nevertheless related to species that were already known. Th is strongly suggested that all animals are descended from a much smaller pool of common ancestors. But their confi dence was about to be shaken.
At fi rst, the species being discovered were new and strange, but they were not bizarre. All of them fi tted into the broad categories by which animals were being classifi ed. Th en, on August , , Captain John Hunter (–), a former British naval offi cer and since the governor of New South Wales, wrote to the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (–) in England to tell him he was sending him some specimens that he asked Banks to pass on to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, of which Hunter was an honorary member. Th e most important of the specimens was an animal Hunter called the womback (wom- bat). He also added that: “In the same cask [as the womback] will be found the Skin of a Small Amphibious Animal of the Mole kind which boroughs (sic) in the Banks of fresh water lakes.” He could send only the skin because the weather had been very warm, mak- ing it impossible to preserve the whole animal in spirits, but he enclosed a drawing in his letter. Th e specimen reached the society late in and was presented together with Hunter’s drawing at a meeting of the society held on December .
Th e animal “of the mole kind” was the fi rst platypus to be seen in Europe, and the naturalists did not know what to make of it. At fi rst they suspected it was a fake, made by stitching together a duck’s bill and body parts from several mammals. Closer investigation showed it to be genuine. It was a small animal—males grow up to about
inches ( cm) long and females are smaller—but what kind of animal?
Th omas Bewick (–) the famous engraver and natural- ist, who was a native of Newcastle, reproduced Hunter’s drawing in the fourth edition of his History of Quadrupeds and added a description: “It appears to possess a three fold nature, that of a fi sh, a bird, and a quadruped [the usual term for a mammal], and is related to nothing hitherto seen.” It had a bill resembling the bill of a duck, suggesting it fed in the same way, very small eyes, four short legs, webbed feet, and long, sharp claws. George Shaw (–), the assistant keeper in the natural history department
of the British Museum, published the fi rst scientifi c description of the animal in his Th e Naturalist’s Miscellany, published in . He also named it Platypus anatinus—duck-billed platypus—but was unable to classify it. Th e platypus has retained its common name, but in the German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (–) altered its generic name to Ornithorhynchus; it is now Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Th e illustration above is from an engraving published in .
Further investigation revealed that the platypus lays eggs, secretes milk to feed its young but has no mammary glands, and possesses a spur on each of its ankles that it can erect to inject venom. Was it a bird, a reptile, or a mammal? Just when European naturalists had devised a classifi cation into which every vertebrate animal could fi t, this strange little beast threatened to demolish the entire edifi ce. Sir Everard Home (–) published the fi rst study of its anatomy in
, demonstrating that the similarity between its bill and that of a duck was purely superfi cial. Behind its bill, the platypus has cheek pouches with horny ridges in which it stores food while it is chewing.
Platypuses possess teeth when they hatch, but lose them by the time they reach maturity. George Bennett (–) published the fi rst description of one living in its natural habitat, and the next account of a live platypus did not appear until , written by the Australian naturalist Henry Burrell (–).
A colored engraving of a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) that appeared in The Natural History of Quadrupeds and Cetaceous Animals, published in 1811 (Time Life Pictures/Stringer)
Th e platypus does not feature in any medieval bestiary, but to the naturalists tasked with defi ning it, this small animal—certainly not of the mole kind!—must have seemed as fantastic as any beast described at th hand from travelers’ tales. Th e matter has been resolved, of course. Ornithorhynchus anatinus is the only member of the family Ornithorhynchidae in the order Monotremata. It is a mammal that retains many primitive features, the most important being the common opening, called a cloaca, to the rectum and uri- nogenital system.
81
Most medieval storytellers and illustrators were not zoologists, nor did they pretend to be. Th ey aimed either to entertain their readers or to provide them with religious and moral instruction, and sensationalism served both ends very well. Th e entertainers knew, just as well as any present-day newspaper editor or owner of a TV sta- tion, that people love to be amazed and frightened. But the medieval entertainers had a distinct advantage, because their readers had no way of checking the veracity of what they were told. Writers could not exaggerate the dangers posed by familiar animals—not even really fi erce ones such as bears and wolves—simply because they were familiar and people knew how to live with them. But a fi re-breath- ing dragon was a very diff erent proposition. No reader had ever met with one, but the very idea that such an encounter might be possible was enough to be frightening—and there was no way to prove that it could not happen.
Moralists had a diff erent purpose. Th ey sought to draw parallels between animal characteristics and behaviors and those of humans.
Th ey did not describe nonhumans as though they were humans—a practice called anthropomorphism that can seriously mislead stu- dents—but compared animal traits with those of wicked or virtuous people. In order to make this work, they were compelled to describe animal traits that in fact do not exist, so either the information on which they based their reports was mistaken or they made it up.
Fantastic Beasts
5
Medieval authors and artists did not travel far from home. Th ey learned about the animals they described and painted from mer- chants, sailors, soldiers who had fought in overseas campaigns, and other seasoned travelers. Th is was the obvious thing to do, but the approach was seriously fl awed. A modern scientist studying wildlife must be single-minded in pursuit of that goal and be prepared to visit remote places and spend many hours waiting patiently for animals to appear. A tourist or person on a business trip has very little chance of seeing local wild animals, far less of examining them closely, and a sailor who visits only busy seaports or a soldier moving with a large army has even less chance. So most of the people supplying the accounts that found their way into books about animals had never actually seen those animals. Th ey were repeating what they had heard from others, who were also repeating stories that had passed from mouth to mouth. By the time they reached Europe, these travel- ers’ tales had the status of modern urban myths.
Amid the distorted accounts of real animals, returning voyagers also brought descriptions of animals that were entirely fi ctitious. Th is chapter describes a few of these—including the dragon—and the les- sons that were drawn from them.