Meet Some Bizarre Medieval Monsters

There's a reason why people say "pics or it didn't happen." Way before we had photography, people could tell tales that had no basis in truth and not only would people have no reason to doubt them, their fantasies would often end up in art or even books. We are familiar with exotic animals described by travelers and then badly translated into art. But there were also tales of monsters that never existed at all, but had some purpose in analogies or in adding to the storyteller's reputation. We know about unicorns and baselisks, but here we also learn about grotesques, the cynocephali, the tarasque, the griffin, blemmeys, and the tree that grows geese. There's a one-minute ad in the middle of this video. (via Everlasting Blort)