# Mythical Creatures That Actually Exist In Real Life

An episode of [Be Amazed](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1687637469), 20 Aug 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/0289df19-6d07-495c-86c4-4233c8aa2b3b/stream.mp3

Have you ever seen a creature that just couldn’t possibly be real? Maybe as the night fell you once saw a grotesquely tall, gangly, lumbering creature with burning eyes heading straight for you… but it turned out to be a lamp overgrown with vines. Phew… No? Just me? Well, you can see how our ancestors thought they saw impossible creatures like dragons, or unicorns, or bigfoot … but what if I told you these creatures actually existed once? So, come with me as we uncover the real beasts that inspired these legends! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Have you ever seen a creature that just couldn't possibly be real?
[0:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Maybe as the night fell, you once saw a grotesque tall, gangly lumbering creature with burning eyes heading straight for you.
[0:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But, it turned out to be a lamp overgrown with vines.
[0:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Who?
[0:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No?
[0:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Just me?
[0:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, you can see how our ancestors thought they saw impossible creatures like dragons, or unicorns or bigfoot.
[0:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But what if I told you these creatures actually existed once?
[0:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So come with me as we uncover the real beast that inspired these legends and some that have even been captured on record by eyewitnesses.
[0:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek poet Homer wrote the Odyssey, which follows the adventures of Odysseus.
[0:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Among his exploits was his arrival on an island populated by a terrifying race of one-eyed man-eating giants, known as Cyclopies.
[1:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, aren't they a sight for sore eyes or?
[1:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I. Odysseus and his crew were held captive by the Cyclops Polyphemus until they escaped with a bit of trickery and air.
[1:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I gouging.
[1:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sure, the Odyssey's a cool myth, but is there any evidence that these cyclopic giants existed in real life?
[1:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, along the Mediterranean islands, people have actually discovered the skulls of huge one-eyed monsters, which seemed to back up the myth.
[1:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But testing revealed these skulls actually belonged to dwarf elephants, distant relatives of modern elephants that roam the Mediterranean long before the arrival of humans until their extinction around 400,000 years ago.
[1:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: an adult grew to about three feet tall, no bigger than an African elephant calf, while their own calves were the size of puppies, they sound adorable.
[1:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How could they have inspired the beastly cyclopies?
[1:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well in the center of an elephant skull lies the nasal passage where the animals trunk would have been.
[1:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over time, this would rot away, leaving behind a hollow cavity.
[2:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Before the 4th century, most Greeks had never encountered elephants, so if they stumbled upon these fossils, they could have mistaken the hole for an eye socket, leading them to believe it came from a cyclops.
[2:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: With all the other extraordinary things the Greeks believed in, like Medusa, the Minotaur, or Cerberus, I don't think they'd have batted an eye at the existence of cyclopies.
[2:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The unicorn is a mystical legendary beast, but it wasn't always the beautiful horned horse that we use in emojis or put on lattes today.
[2:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The first mention in western literature of this creature comes from the Greek physician Kitizius in the 4th century BCE.
[2:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He relayed stories from Indian travelers of a large pale blue-eyed donkey with a crimson head and three horns of white red and black.
[2:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Katizius's animal could well be the original unicorn, or, you know, Satan, though it seems that this creature was actually a descriptive combination of large herbivores, such as the Chiru, Kiyang, and Indian Rhino.
[3:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In 77 AD, Roman author Pliny the Elder gave his own description of the unicorn, a ferocious, one-horned beast impossible to capture alive, though he was probably describing the Indian Rhino.
[3:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the radiant unicorn was partly inspired by big smelly rhinos?
[3:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, in the third century BC, scholars translating the Hebrew Bible to Greek mixed up Rhyam with Monoceros, meaning one horn previously used for rhinos.
[3:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Before they knew it, this became Unicornus in Latin and Unicorn in English, leading the creature to become a symbol of purity and Jesus Christ.
[3:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As for that swirled horn, this came about during the Middle Ages when sailors and merchants peddled spiraled horns to European markets, claiming they were taken from slayed unicorns.
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: People believe these possessed mystical powers such as the ability to purify water and heal the sick.
[3:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In reality, these were the tuss of narwhals, an Arctic whale species with an enlarged tooth that grows around six to nine feet long from the animal's head.
[4:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: royalty and aristocrats on a where-narr walls even existed eagerly purchased the tusks.
[4:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In fact, the throne of Denmark constructed in 1660 is famously made with what they proudly called Unicorn Horn.
[4:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What a whale of a scam!
[4:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in 1976, the milling family went on an Easter vacation to Cornwall, England.
[4:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was a trip to remember for all the wrong reasons.
[4:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They were staying in the village of Monten, and their two girls were playing near the local church.
[4:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Suddenly they heard a noise coming from above, and when they looked up, they saw a horrific twisted shape hovering over the church's tower.
[4:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was a dark feathered creature, the same size as a man, but without stretched wings and giant eyes that were far too big for any man's head.
[4:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The girls fled and severely shaken, they told their father who in turn recounted the incident to local sage Tony Doc Shields.
[4:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After this, more people were said to be terrorized by the Cornish creature, coined the Alman across the late 70s and 80s, and each told their stories to Doc who wrote and inspired books based on Alman.
[5:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now it's legend haunts the south of England, but over the pond in a small village called Point Pleasant in West Virginia, in the United States, a similar freak can be found in local folklore.
[5:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Point Pleasant was a TNT area, somewhere factories that produced explosives for World War II, after the war TNT was still being stored on site supposedly polluting the surrounding environment.
[5:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This led locals to speculate about what sort of effects it might have on the wildlife.
[5:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When in 1966 two couples came running out of the woods claiming they'd seen something monstrous.
[5:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A humanoid figure with ten-foot wings and gigantic glowing red eyes, the Mothman.
[5:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The local paper ran the story which riled the entire town up to go hunting for it.
[5:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This saw it passed from story to legend, with people claiming to this day they've caught the creature on camera.
[6:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, what were they really?
[6:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If these really were humanoid, then the wings would need to be able to generate as much upward lift as the humanoid's weight.
[6:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if Alman and Mothman were both five and a half feet tall say, then their wingspan would need to be around 22 feet.
[6:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's a lot bigger than Mothman's 10-foot span.
[6:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Perhaps what these people mistakenly saw was a large species of owl, like the Eurasian Eagle owl.
[6:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You see the larger female of the species can measure up to about 30 inches long with a wingspan of over six feet.
[6:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Just one problem with that theory, the species isn't present in the UK or the US.
[6:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it's not unheard of for avian adventures to get lost and arrive from mainland Europe.
[6:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They could have also been large barn owls.
[6:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Trust me, when a barn owl hisses, it sounds like something out of a horror film.
[6:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A horse snake-like rast with none of the gentle hooting you'd expect.
[6:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you've never heard one, look it up, truly unsettling.
[7:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Owls aren't the only explanation though, all of the element stories came from people who spoke to Doc or one of his acquaintances and then vanished.
[7:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: For context, Doc is a self-proclaimed warlock famous for his tall tales.
[7:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I couldn't find a single news report on the album, so chances are he conjured up the whole thing.
[7:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, Mothman did have multiple newspapers run stories about the sightings, which included the names and addresses of the people who'd seen it, but this was at a time where UFO and alien fever had gripped the nation.
[7:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Maybe their imaginations got carried away?
[7:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What do you think?
[7:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Were these sightings of big birds or just tall tails?
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let us know in the comments if the platform allows it.
[7:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Of all the sea monsters lurking in the ocean depths, one of the most terrifying has to be the crack-in.
[7:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The legend originates from the waters of Scandinavia, where sea fares would return home with tales of a gigantic monster, as big as an island that preyed on on wary ships.
[8:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Throughout the ages, the Kraken's appearance has varied from a formless blob to a giant crustacean.
[8:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was only in the 18th century that the image we have today, a giant squid, or octopus with tree-sized tentacles, emerged.
[8:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The inspiration for the giant squid-like cracking likely stemmed from sightings of, surprise, surprise, giant, and colossal squids.
[8:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These are massive cephalopods over 40 feet in length, that's bigger than your average school bus.
[8:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The colossal squid sticks to Antarctic waters, whereas giant squids are found nearly everywhere, barpolar and tropical regions.
[8:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Take a giant squid that showed up in Toyama Bay, Japan, in 2015.
[8:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: the footage of it drifting beneath a small boat is genuinely surreal.
[8:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This pale alien-looking creature with dinner plate eyes gliding through the shallows like something from another world.
[8:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The giant squid tips the scales around a hefty 600 pounds while the colossal squid dwarfs even that, weighing up to 1,100 pounds, which is about as heavy as a grizzly bear.
[9:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Even as late as 2004, people have had crack-and-like experiences firsthand?
[9:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: French sailors participating in the jewel-vurn trophy race reported and encounter with a crack-and-like squid.
[9:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Cruman Olivier Dukersawson recounted how the creature latched onto their vessel's hull only releasing its grip when the ship came to a halt.
[9:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's only been about 250 sightings of giant squid ever recorded, mostly involving deceased specimens washed ashore.
[9:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is because they live at depths of some 3,280 feet, and there's been even fewer sightings of the colossal squid, which live at depths as low as 6,560 feet.
[9:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Live encounters with these animals are very rare, though, after hearing stories of Kraken's attacking crews, maybe that's a good thing.
[9:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A legend from the 5th century BC tells of the Greek historian Herodotus embarking on a journey towards Central Asia.
[10:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As he crossed the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, he encountered the Syrians, nomadic people who shared tales of fierce creatures with beaks and four legs, guarding caves brimming with gold and protecting their young.
[10:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hmm, those creatures sound just like Griffins, while beasts with the head front legs and occasionally wings of an eagle coupled with the hindquarters of a lion.
[10:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Man, those things would make one heck of a guardbird cat.
[10:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Coincidentally, the goby desert boasts one of the richest fossil deposits in the world, which is where the remains of the protocerotops can be found.
[10:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This dinosaur lived 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period and was an ancestor of the more famous triceratops.
[10:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This her bivorous creature measured six feet long and weighed 400 pounds, so about the same size as a very large wild boar.
[11:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Classical folklorist Adrian Mayer hypothesized that the Sithians while mining for gold may have unearthed, proto-sarotops remains sparking the griffin myth, both have beaked bird-like faces yet walk on four legs like a mammal.
[11:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But not everyone buys this, beasts with falcon heads and lions bodies appeared in motifs from ancient Egypt as early as the second millennium BC around 2,000 years before heratitis.
[11:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's much more likely that when Greeks started trading with the Middle East in the 8th century BC, they picked up new styles of art and religion.
[11:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's when mythical creatures like Griffins were adopted into Greek culture.
[11:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As for the Sithians, maybe they just told Herodotist the Griffins story to stop impinging their gold?
[11:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Do you like snakes?
[11:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah?
[11:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No?
[11:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, what if you saw a sea snake over a mile long?
[11:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, big no from me.
[11:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Myths of gigantic sea snakes have spanned cultures worldwide from the South Asian Naga gods to the Japanese region to the North Sherman Gondor.
[12:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One of the most infamous sightings comes from the fishing town of Gloucester in Massachusetts in the U.S.
[12:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Between 1817 and 1819, reports of a strange creature dubbed the Gloucester Sea Serpent came flooding in.
[12:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Descriptions varied wildly, but almost all reports referred to its immense size and snake-like head.
[12:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now this might have been a basking shark, when viewed from above these 40 feet long fish slipped through the water just like a serpent.
[12:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It wouldn't be the first time one of these galious has been mistaken for the mythical creature.
[12:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In 1808, the 55 foot long carcass of a basking shark washed up on Strancy in the Orkney Island, Scotland.
[12:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's immense size lead locals to believe it was the remains of a sea serpent.
[12:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The basking shark isn't the only contender for this monstrous title, though.
[12:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In January, 1860, what was believed to be a sea serpent washed up on hungry bay in Bermuda turned out to be an orfish.
[13:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They disturbingly lack scales and have red hair-like filaments growing along their bodies.
[13:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The sea creature holds the title for the world's longest bony fish alive measuring up to a gigantic 50 feet long.
[13:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although there are elusive nature makes them difficult to study, as they tend to live between 65 and 650 feet below, only really breaching the water's surface when they're ill or are about to die.
[13:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, what do you think the Gloster Serpent was?
[13:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A basking shark, an orfish, or something else entirely?
[13:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What mythical creature hordes mountains of gold, belches, flames, and soars through the skies?
[13:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You got it, the Western Dragon.
[13:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Legends of these creatures have been with us since the late Second Millennium BC in Mesopotamia, though these early dragons were depicted as being thinner and more snakelike.
[14:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was only in Europe after the 8th century that they evolved into winged four-legged beasts.
[14:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The fire breathing likely came about when Christians associated dragons with Satan and Hellfire.
[14:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: On the other side, you've got East Asian dragons.
[14:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These serpentine creatures are wise often associated with water and are generally chill.
[14:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So what animal inspired these creatures?
[14:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Man, it'd be easier to ask what animal didn't inspire them.
[14:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whenever early people found fossils left behind by gigantic animals, they're imagination, understandably conjured up terrifying monsters.
[14:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Take for instance the city of Klugganford, Austria, where the town hall displayed a skull believed to be from a lindworm, a snakeish dragon slain by a night.
[14:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To honor the legend, a statue was carved with the skull used as a reference.
[14:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, in the 1800s, zoologist discovered it was actually from a woolly rhino, so rhinos were mistaken for unicorns and dragons.
[15:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, that's surprising.
[15:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What's more in 16th-century China a medical guide created by a court physician described a medicine made from dragon bones, which were in reality, fossils.
[15:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, these may have been from dinocephalosaurus orientalis, a 16-foot long aquatic reptile from the Triassic period, and honestly, its long serpentine body looks unmistakably similar to that of traditional Chinese dragons, which have no wings and instead are fabled to swim through the air.
[15:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Though it's not just fossils that stoke legends of this distinct looking creature, in 2017 villagers in Zhangjiaoku and China's northern Hebei province claimed to have found a 60-foot long dragon skeleton.
[15:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While it did resemble the fossil structure and had a number of locals convinced dragons walked among them, it was actually a movie prop, though the structure and scale of it was still impressive.
[15:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Another more psychological theory is that dragon sprang from the human mind as a combination of all the predators our ancestors would have feared such as big cats, snakes, crocodiles, and birds of prey.
[16:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hang on, if all the early dragons were depicted as large snake-like beings, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say they might have been inspired by, well, large snakes.
[16:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Good research here.
[16:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you're like me, you've fallen for that special someone.
[16:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Weirdly, it's a tale as old as time in East Asian folklore where Fox spirit myths thrive.
[16:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whether it be the Chinese huli jing, the Japanese kitsune, or the Korean gumihou, all have stories telling of their shape-shifting powers, as well as their ability to sport over a thousand tales.
[16:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The number of tales supposedly reflected a fox's age in status, the more tales the older, wiser and more powerful they were, with nine being the most common.
[16:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These myths often involve foxes taking on the guys of a beautiful woman, in China when a fox woman seduced a man she would feed off his young energy, weakening the man and even killing him.
[17:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not all foxes were bad news, and Japan some were messengers of anari, a god of harvest and land in the Shinto religion, and were depicted as pure white.
[17:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now, can you guess what animal inspired these foxes?
[17:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, don't actually answer, that was a rhetorical question.
[17:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There was no distinction between ordinary red foxes and paranormal ones.
[17:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Apparently, every day foxes were simply not old enough to possess supernatural powers.
[17:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was the animal's tendency to appear at twilight that contributed to them being seen as liminal beings, ones that existed within two worlds, the regular and the spirit.
[17:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, I've been thinking of getting back on the dating scene.
[17:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Maybe I should start hanging around dumpsters at night and wait for the Foxy ladies.
[17:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you're ever fronicking in the rivers of Japan, locals will say you must watch out for the Kappa.
[17:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is a goblin-like water spirit about the same size as a child.
[18:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Its covered in scales has webbed hands, shaggy hair and a depression at the top of its head filled with water just like a bowl.
[18:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They even have a pension for sucking the insides out of a person's.
[18:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's just say you don't want to bend over and near them.
[18:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay, this sounds too bizarre to be real, but some claim there's evidence this demon exists.
[18:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In 2014, so-called mummified remains of the creature, when on display at the Miyakanojo Shimazu residence after it was supposedly shot on a riverbank in 1818.
[18:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hmm, I'm not buying it, either these remains are fake or they belong to an animal with similar appendages like the giant Japanese salamander.
[18:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is the second largest salamander in the world, weighing up to 55 pounds and growing up to 5 feet long.
[18:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the same as a 10-year-old child.
[19:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unlike Kappa's, Salamanders avoid humans and reports of them attacking people are rare.
[19:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What they are aggressive towards is their prey.
[19:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The way Salamanders snap their heads as they chomp down on their catch may have startled onlookers, inspiring the mythical creature.
[19:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if you ask me, the Kappa looks more like a really big frog,
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Maybe the myth was conjured up by parents to stop their children from getting too close to the water by making up a butt-sucking monster.
[19:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Top to your parenting there.
[19:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Starting in the mid-1970s, farmers across Puerto Rico awoke to a gruesome scene.
[19:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Their livestock had been slaughtered, their blood drained, and some even slid open.
[19:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Witnesses reported a strange creature prowling in the dark with sharp fangs and glowing eyes.
[19:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The carnage grew in spread across Latin America and the southern United States throughout the 80s and 90s, where the culprit became known as El Chupacabra, the goat sucker.
[20:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The most famous account comes from Madeleine Tolentino in Canovanas, back in August 1995, who claimed she saw the monster roaming her street.
[20:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She described it as being some three-feet tall at the shoulder, with human hands, big eyes, no nose, and grayish skin that looked like wet leather covered in rough patches of hair.
[20:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The witness sketches that resulted were truly unhinged, leading some to believe the creature must have been from outer space, or the result of a secret government experiment.
[20:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I'm afraid our old friend Buzz Kilman is here to ruin this wild assumption.
[20:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Chupacabra are likely just coyotes suffering from a severe skin condition called Mange.
[20:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is when parasitic mites burrow under the host skin, releasing eggs and waste, causing an inflammatory response from the immune system.
[20:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The animals fur begins to fall out and the skin becomes covered in sores, giving it a scaly appearance.
[21:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The condition is severely debilitating for canines and infected coyotes are forced to pray on easy targets such as livestock in order to survive.
[21:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mangy canines might not be the only inspiration.
[21:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Tolentino, along with other witnesses, said that the chupacabra borer resemblance to the alien villain in the sci-fi horror film species released that same year.
[21:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Maybe Tolentino's overactive imagination exaggerated an infected coyote's spikiness, giving it an extra terrestrial appearance.
[21:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Regardless of the reason I'm happy knowing this thing is probably just a sick dog and not a livestock hungry space vampire.
[21:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Aphuman hybrid myths have been proliferated all over the world, from the European wild man to the majestic Himalayan Yeti.
[21:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the most famous of all has to be the North American Bigfoot or Sasquatch, whose legend traces back to indigenous folklore.
[21:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The word Sasquatch reportedly comes from the Canadians to Halis Nation who believed in the shape-shifting Sasquets.
[22:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Even today, people still claim they have proof that they exist in the wild.
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Take for example a peaceful car ride through Bosch Court of Stan and Russia back in 2016.
[22:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The dash cam footage shows a huge dark ape-like figure lumbering across a snowy forest road disappearing back into the trees as the car approaches.
[22:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Skeptics say it's a person in a costume, but Bigfoot believers point to it as some of the clearest evidence yet.
[22:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So according to that footage, there's a Bigfoot in Russia, too.
[22:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Despite spooky phenomena like this, Skeptics have dismissed stories of eight men as a load of hooey.
[22:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, in 1935, the discovery of an unusually large molar tooth in Hong Kong gave credence to big-foot believers.
[22:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Since then, fossilized jaws and teeth of a gigantic prehistoric ape have been found in China, Vietnam, and India.
[23:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They belong to Gigantopithecus, a relative of the orangutan.
[23:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This extinct ape lived about 12 to 8 million years ago, stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds.
[23:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wait a minute, Mom?
[23:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The animal lived in Asia some 12 to 8 million years ago, spending its days lumbering on all floors and feeding on vegetation.
[23:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Crypto zoologists, people who search for legendary creatures whose existence isn't proven, have argued that the relatives of the Gigantopithecus may still live in places where these
[23:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Though other big-foot-efficient autos have dismissed these claims, arguing that Bigfoot is agile and too legged, rather than a 10-foot-tall orangutan.
[23:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Man, the Bigfoot fan club has more complex politics than I ever imagined.
[23:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Horsewriting is hard.
[23:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: First you have to get them out of the stables, then strap all the gear onto them, then attempt to get on, and stay on.
[23:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wouldn't it be simpler if you were just attached to the horse?
[24:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's where being a Centaur comes in handy.
[24:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These were a fabled race of creatures from Greek mythology, part-human part-horse that dwelled in the mountains of Thessaly and Arcadia.
[24:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There are a few stories about how Centaur's came into being, none of them are child friendly.
[24:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One version involves a character called Centaur's Getting, well, let's just say friendly with some mayors resulting in the Centaur race.
[24:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over familiarity with animals aside, surely there weren't really half human-half horse beings galloping around.
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, but they were possibly inspired by a real-life site.
[24:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in the early classical period, that's the time from 510 to 323 BC, people didn't ride horses.
[24:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So when Sithian Horseman nomadic warriors from the East came rating, terrified Greeks might have mistaken the writer and horse as one creature.
[24:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Similar effects happen when horse riding cultures come into contact with those who don't ride.
[25:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico, the indigenous Aztecs and Incas believed the animal and human to be a single creature.
[25:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Now, that may not be the only reason for these man-embles.
[25:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Terracotta figures of humans with horse-hine quarters were discovered in the Mycini and city of Ugarret in modern-day Syria during the late Greek Bronze Age.
[25:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Greeks may have snagged this motif by interacting with other civilizations in the east, whether through war, trade, or travel.
[25:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sorry to be a naysayer, we've come to the end of our tales, what was your favorite mythical creature?
[25:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let us know in the comments if the platform allows it, and if you enjoyed this episode, hit follow wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss the next one.
[25:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for listening.

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