At the beginning of the 21st Century monsters still roam the remote, and sometimes not so remote, corners of our planet. It is our job to search for them. The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is - we believe - the largest professional, scientific and full-time organisation in the world dedicated to cryptozoology - the study of unknown animals. Since 1992 the CFZ has carried out an unparalleled programme of research and investigation all over the world. Since 2009 we have been running the increasingly popular CFZ Blog Network, and although there has been an American branch of the CFZ for over ten years now, it is only now that it has a dedicated blog.

Friday 23 May 2014

THE MYSTERIOUS MANTICORE

Manticore

Ctesias (5th Century BC) was an Ancient Greek.  I don't mean he himself was ancient, but he came from Greece in ancient times.  However, he traveled eastwards to Persia (Iran) and wrote about India and other topics.

He describes a creature he calls the martihora, but this word was later corrupted to manticore,its common name today.    He said it had the face of a man, the body of a lion and a sting on the end of its tail.  It could shoot out spines and these spines were deadly, unless you happened to be an elephant.  Commentators generally think Ctesias was describing a tiger, because there was a belief that this beast could shoot its whiskers at adversaries.  However, I assume he was working only from descriptions and not very good ones if that was the case.

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