Zoology wasn’t always the precise science we know today. For centuries, scholars like Aristotle and Pliny the Elder tried to catalogue everything they could learn about the animal kingdom, often relying on hearsay and imagination. Their conclusions gave rise to a parade of strange things that many accepted as fact.
Strange Things About Animal Beliefs
10 Elephants Constantly Fight Dragons
The Greeks and Romans were absolutely mesmerized by elephants. Having seen them in India and Africa, they concluded these massive mammals were the smartest creatures on Earth. Their awe was understandable—elephants had already been trained to walk tightropes and even to trace Greek letters with a brush.
One Roman encyclopedia boasted, “When an elephant happens to meet a man in the desert, [and realizes the man is lost, then] the elephant… points out the way.” The same source warned that getting an elephant onto a boat was a nightmare; the beast would refuse to board until someone promised a safe return home.
The text went on to claim that dragons were “perpetually at war with the elephant.” In Indian lore, dragons supposedly swooped down on elephants, trying to crush them for their cold blood. A particularly alert elephant, however, could knock a dragon down and crush it underfoot.
Centuries later another book repeated these claims and added a whimsical detail: elephants supposedly reproduced by eating a magical root that made babies appear spontaneously in their wombs.
9 Aurochs Have Projectile, Toxic Poop
All modern cattle trace back to a single ancestor: the aurochs, which vanished about 400 years ago. According to the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, aurochs possessed inward‑bent horns that were essentially useless against predators. Their only defense, he claimed, was a rapid‑fire excrement.
Pliny wrote, “While in the act of flying, it sends forth its excrements.” He measured the range at roughly 1.2 meters (4 ft), but noted that the projectile poop could actually set predators ablaze.
The weaponized poop narrative survived well into the Middle Ages. Aristotle echoed Pliny’s account, insisting the 1‑meter (4‑ft) estimate was conservative and that aurochs could easily splatter foes from 1.8 meters (6 ft) away.
8 Salamanders Can Put Out Fires
For a solid millennium, people were convinced salamanders were magical fire‑extinguishers. Romans believed the tiny amphibians were so cold that they could snuff out flames merely by touching them.
The claim originated with Pliny the Elder, who even tested it himself. After proclaiming salamanders could douse fires, he tossed one into a blaze—only to discover a lifeless, ordinary salamander.Despite his disappointment, the myth persisted. A thousand years later, Jewish rabbi Rashi still wrote about salamanders’ fire‑proof abilities, even suggesting that covering oneself with salamander blood could render a person fire‑resistant.
Rashi went further, asserting that salamanders were born in furnaces. He described a newborn emerging after a glassblower kept his furnace alight for seven consecutive days.
7 Eels Grow Out Of Mud
Aristotle was a firm believer in “spontaneous generation,” the idea that certain creatures simply appeared from non‑living matter. His most enduring claim was that eels magically sprouted from mud.
For more than two millennia, no one questioned Aristotle’s eel theory. Pliny added his own twist, saying eels were produced by rubbing against rocks, while 17th‑century English writer Izaak Walton claimed they grew from a special dew that fell in May and June.
Everyone agreed on one point: eels were a divine gift. It wasn’t until the 19th century that scientists finally located eel reproductive organs, and the credit for cracking the mystery went to Sigmund Freud—who, before founding psychoanalysis, tackled the eel’s secret life.
6 Whales Have Antennae
In the 17th century, French naturalist Pierre Pomet published a lavishly illustrated book of bizarre creatures. His depictions were based on imagination rather than observation, and his whales were especially outlandish.
Pomet claimed that male whales could be distinguished by hands with fingers, a long metallic sheet on their backs, and massive armored heads reminiscent of Chinese dragons. On top of those heads, he added two long antennae, each tipped with a fluffy pom‑pom.
Female whales, according to Pomet, also sported antennae—just shorter and stubbier—but the presence of these appendages supposedly indicated gender.
5 Crocodiles Are Basically Just Monkeys
Ancient societies knew what crocodiles looked like, yet medieval artists often got wildly creative. The 11th‑century “Book of Flowers” labeled “crocodiles” as creatures with long, curly tails, hands, and hairy faces—essentially monkeys with scaly bodies.
Later medieval illustrators refined the tail but kept the monkey‑like head. Some even gave these hybrid beasts horse‑sized legs or dog‑like bodies covered in scales. Because no one who had actually seen a crocodile bothered to correct them, European art continued to portray crocodiles this way until the 17th century.
4 Rhinoceroses Hate Elephants
Pliny the Elder insisted that rhinoceroses and elephants were mortal enemies, destined to clash whenever they met. The story spread so far that 15th‑century Portuguese king Manuel I actually shipped a rhinoceros and an elephant to his court to stage a battle.
The showdown didn’t go as the legend predicted. Instead of fighting, the elephant simply fled, proving that the two giants were more lovers than combatants.
Even though the experiment failed, the tale kept evolving. German woodworker Albrecht Dürer, enthralled by the rumors, sketched a rhinoceros with scaly legs and armor‑like plates, describing it as “the color of a speckled tortoise, covered with thick scales.”
3 Bees Can Be Killed By A Menstruating Woman’s Stare
Pliny the Elder also harbored bizarre ideas about women. He warned that the mere stare of a menstruating woman could instantly kill a swarm of bees.
He further claimed that dead bees could be resurrected by covering them with mud and the body of an ox or bull. Later writers like Saint Augustine and Isidore of Seville agreed that bees never mated; instead, they believed bees sprang from the rotting flesh of cattle.
2 Vipers Eat Each Other When They Reproduce
Greek and Roman authors painted a gruesome picture of viper reproduction. They claimed that the male would thrust his head into the female’s mouth, spitting semen, which would excite the female so much that she would bite off his head.
According to the same sources, the female would then carry up to twenty offspring inside her, and the eager young would chew their way out, devouring their mother from within.
By the third century AD, the Roman work Physiologus added a bizarre twist: the male viper resembled a man, while the female looked like a woman up to the waist, below which she bore a crocodile’s tail.
1 Pelican Blood Can Bring The Dead Back To Life
In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville wrote that pelicans possessed a miraculous blood capable of resurrecting the dead. He described a rite of passage where a mother pelican would kill its fledgling, mourn for three days, then peck at its own chest until it bled. The blood would then fall on the dead chick, reviving it.
Although Isidore seemed uncertain of his own tale, the story was accepted as fact. By the 13th century, multiple texts cited it as scientific truth, and by the 16th century the self‑stabbing pelican became an emblem of Queen Elizabeth I and appeared on the cover of the first King James Bible.