Legendary creature

Others are based on real encounters or garbled accounts of travellers' tales, such as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, a sheeplike animal which supposedly grew tethered to the earth.

[4] Some animals, such as the gorilla, the kangaroo, the okapi, the Komodo dragon, the giant squid, and the platypus, were thought to be mythical before they were discovered by science.

Other tales include Medusa to be defeated by Perseus, the (human/bull) Minotaur to be destroyed by Theseus, and the Hydra to be killed by Heracles, while Aeneas battles with the harpies.

[6][7][8] Some classical era creatures, such as the (horse/human) centaur, chimaera, Triton and the flying horse Pegasus, are found also in Indian art.

Medieval bestiaries included animals regardless of biological reality; the basilisk represented the devil, while the manticore symbolised temptation.

[12]: 126 Physical detail was not the central focus of the artists depicting such animals, and medieval bestiaries were not conceived as biological categorizations.

Creatures like the unicorn and griffin were not categorized in a separate "mythological" section in medieval bestiaries,[14]: 124  as the symbolic implications were of primary importance.

Nona C. Flores explains, "By the tenth century, artists were increasingly bound by allegorical interpretation, and abandoned naturalistic depictions.