MIRABILIS: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History by Shuker Karl P.N

Author:Shuker, Karl P.N. [Shuker, Karl P.N.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Politics & Social Sciences, Customs & Traditions, Popular Culture, Trivia & Fun Facts, Science & Math, Education & Reference, Biological Sciences, Zoology, Social Sciences
ISBN: 9781938398063
Publisher: Anomalist Books
Published: 2013-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE VOROMPATRA—FROM ELEPHANT SNATCHER TO ELEPHANT BIRD?

In the Arabian Nights fairy tales, Sinbad the sailor visited an island in the East frequented by a monstrous eagle-like bird—a bird so enormous and powerful that it could snatch up a full-grown elephant with ease in its mighty talons and bear the hapless beast aloft before dropping it to the ground to kill it, after which it would carry the elephant’s remains to its nest and feed its flesh to its ravenous young. This winged wonder was known as the roc or rukh. Yet although widely deemed to be a wholly fabulous, totally imaginary entity, several real-life medieval travelers claimed to have heard tell or even to have seen physical evidence for the existence of just such a creature.

Perhaps the most famous of these personages was none other than Marco Polo, who affirmed that, according to his Asian host the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, the roc lived on the island of Madagascar or isles close to it. He also stated that the emperor had shown him an immensely long roc feather and two gigantic roc eggs, all of which were owned by the afore-mentioned emperor.

It is highly likely that the so-called roc feather was actually one of the huge leaves of the raffia palm tree Raphia regalis, which are deceptively plume-like—as seen in the photograph above of one such leaf, from my personal collection of zoological curios. In medieval times, these leaves were often mistaken for (or passed off by wily merchants as) giant feathers, especially by (or to) gullible Western travelers and pilgrims to the Middle East, Africa, and the Orient. The giant eggs, conversely, are much more plausible, because during the early 1800s many exceptionally large egg fragments, and even some complete eggs, again of truly colossal size, were indeed discovered by scientists on—where else?—the island of Madagascar.

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