In Greek myth the Minotaur had a man's body and a bull's head. King Minos had the builder Daedalus make a maze called the Labyrinth for it. The hero Theseus found his way out with a ball of thread. In Greek myth a centaur was half man and half horse, with a human head, arms and chest joined to a horse's body. A griffin is a made-up animal with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.
Dragon stories are told in many places. The oldest Chinese dragons are more than 3,000 years old. In Chinese stories dragons lived in water or in the clouds. They brought rain to help crops grow. Chinese dragons were pictured as a mix of parts from many animals, like a snake's neck, a carp's scales and an eagle's claws. In China, the dragon is a lucky symbol that stands for wisdom, power and good fortune. In China, people hold dragon dances at New Year celebrations. The dragon is one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. So there is a Year of the Dragon. Dragons were not always scary.
Medieval animal books called bestiaries included imaginary animals, such as the phoenix and the unicorn. These books grew from an older Greek book on animals called the Physiologus, and later writers added more to it. The Unicorn Tapestries, a famous set of medieval wall hangings of a unicorn hunt, are now in the Met Cloisters in New York. Writers said unicorns were real well into the Middle Ages. The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.
The narwhal's long spiral horn is really a tooth. A narwhal's tusk is not solid bone. It is full of nerves that can sense changes in the water, such as salt and temperature. Long ago, traders sold narwhal tusks as unicorn horns and got a lot of money for them. Queen Elizabeth I was said to own a unicorn horn worth 10,000 pounds, the price of a castle. Kings and queens drank from cups made of unicorn horn because they believed it was protective. But the horn was really narwhal tusk.
Long ago, people found giant fossil bones and made up stories to explain them. Ancient Greeks and Romans collected fossil bones, and people who did not know about extinction thought huge fossils might belong to dragons. The English word dragon comes from the Greek word drakon, which meant a serpent. Dragons in old European books were drawn in many different shapes. The old English poem Beowulf has a dragon that guards a pile of treasure.
Sailors long ago told of mermaids. But they were most likely seeing manatees. The average adult manatee is about 10 feet long and weighs 800 to 1,200 pounds. Manatees and their relatives, the sirenians, are the only completely aquatic mammals that eat only plants. Sea serpent stories are very old. The giant oarfish may be one real animal behind them. As of November 2026, the giant oarfish is the longest bony fish in the world. Giant squid live deep in the ocean, far below where most people ever see.
Komodo dragons are real animals, and wild ones live on a few islands in Indonesia. Komodo dragons eat almost any meat, from small rodents to large water buffalo. Scientists from the West did not find them until the early 1900s, after rumors of a giant dragon-like lizard. The largest verified Komodo dragon was 10.3 feet (3.13 m) long, and adults are usually 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 m), with males bigger than females. That makes it the largest lizard alive, as of November 2026.
Words to know
- Minotaur: bull-headed man
- centaur: half horse
- Labyrinth: a maze
- bestiaries: animal books
- aquatic: living in water
