Sea monk

[9] The sea monk was listed in several illustrated natural history books published in the mid-16th century, such as Pierre Belon (1553), Guillaume Rondelet (1554), and Conrad Gesner (1558).

Belon (1553) gave a briefer notice on piscis monachus (monk-fish) in his Latin volume, a more expanded account appearing later in his French version of 1555.

[10] Rondelet (1554) called it "the fish with the habit of a monk (piscis monachi habitu),[1] and classed it as a merman (homo maris).

[11] What prompted his suspicions of artistic license seems to be his discovery of other portrayals of the monkfish, quite different from his own, obtained by his rival and friend Gesner and others in Rome.

[25] The aforementioned Lycosthenes in Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon [Of Portents and Shown Times] (1557) described the 1546 sea monk as having a black head, and gave an illustration of it as such.

And also Rams, Calfs, Horses, Hares, and Hogs, Wolves, Lions, Urchins, Elephants and Dogs, Yea, Men and Mayds; and (which I more admire) The mytred Bishop and the cowled Fryer; Whereof, examples, (but a few years since) Were shew'n the Norways, and Polonian Prince."

In the early 1850s, Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup suggested that the sea-monk was a giant squid,[27][28][14] a theory more recently popularised by writer Richard Ellis.