I Am Legitimately Shocked That This Is Not Referring To Cheetahs - Fast, Patterned Beast, Which Historically

I am legitimately shocked that this is not referring to cheetahs - fast, patterned beast, which historically ranged across most of Africa, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent, which (at least from a European perspective) had been used in hunting by Romans and in Byzantium (so, more different Romans), not to mention the cultures of North Africa, and large parts of South and East Asia. I'm aware of some confusion between cheetahs and leopards, but not tigers... huh 🤔

I appreciate that the hunter has come prepared, not only with a fast horse and some glass globes, but also a full set of maille!

If I can find a glass/reflective sphere to roll for my cat, I will let you know the results!

Bestiaryposting Results: Ghraggal

This week's entry is kind of just an anecdote about a Thing That Happens, with not that many details about the animal. So let's see what people did with that. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find out at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

The entry in question can be found here:

And if you want to participate in the next one, that entry can be found here:

Without further ado, art below the cut:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) notes that "ghraggal" looks kinda like "gharial" and just runs with it. I think it turned out well; those are some quality crocodilians. There's also some interesting discussion of the design in the linked post, which I recommend checking out.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) makes the very medieval-artist statement that their Default Beast is some kind of dog-thing, so in the absence of a specific description that's what we've got here. I like the direction they're going with the non-specific "markings". The additional explanation in the linked post is also recommended. (And thank you for providing alt text.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) explains that their design is aiming for "drawn by someone who has heard of big cats in theory, but has never encountered one", and I think they nailed it. We can also note and appreciate that in this version the baby escaped.

Aberdeen Bestiary version:

Honestly I think Coolest-Capybara kind of nailed it. That definitely is a big cat drawn by someone who's never seen one, and it's even blue.

Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell by the spots, this is a tiger.

I'm not sure what to add here. We could speculate on why anyone wants to steal tiger cubs, but honestly there's probably demand for them in royal menageries, so it kind of makes sense. I don't think the glass sphere trick would actually work though -- that kind of sounds like someone who observed that cats can mistake their own reflections for other cats and just made up a whole story about it.

You are encouraged to roll reflective spheres at your cats and report on the results. (No actual tigers, please; we do not support harassing endangered species on this blog.)

i read the hobbit in 3rd grade and i thought it was really lame. however i liked bilbo baggins for some reason and i was fully convinced he was some sort of rabbit/mouse thing until i saw the lotr movies and was really, really confused

The Lulling Nisegwag

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum

Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen (had to refill the cartridge half-way through!).

Thought process under the cut…

“The Nisegwag is a seabird which produces its young on the shore, depositing its eggs in the sand, around midwinter."

So, a seabird, that nests on the shore. Means I don't need to worry too much about colour (since most seabirds are variations on greys, whites and blacks). Specifically, it nests in the sand, so I did a bit of digging and based the nest loosely off that of terns and plovers (the terns also had a bit of influence with the bird's markings on the face and beak, along with gannets (mostly because they are really pretty looking birds!).

"It chooses as the time to hatch its young, the period when the sea is at its highest and the waves break more fiercely than usual on the shore; with the result that the grace with which this bird is endowed shines forth the more, with the dignity of an unexpected calm. For it is a fact that when the sea has been raging, once the Nisegwag’s eggs have been laid, it suddenly becomes gentle, all the stormy winds subside, the strong breezes lighten, and as the wind drops, the sea lies calm, until the Nisegwag hatches its eggs."

I compressed the different time periods here a little for effect - as such, we have the suns rays breaking through the heavy cloud above, and the sea being calm, just as the chicks are hatching. We can also see some bladder wrack and other natural ocean materials thrown up onto the beach by the previous stormy weather, inclduding shells and a cuttlebone. We also know that this bird is graceful (I'm going to assume in flight, rather than on the ground!) so we have a few of the flight feathers clearly visible at the ends of the wings. It's also generally a quite smooth bird, with thick, water resistant feathers, though it has fluffed up its chest feathers to incubate the eggs.

"The eggs take seven days to hatch, at the end of which the Nisegwag brings forth its young and the hatching is at an end. The Nisegwag takes a further seven days to feed its chicks until they begin to grow into young birds. Such a short feeding-time is nothing to marvel at, since the completion when the hatching process takes so few days. This little bird is endowed by God with such grace that sailors know with confidence that these fourteen days will be days of fine weather and call them ‘[redacted]’, in which there will be no period of stormy weather.”

A very quick growing bird - at first I wanted to draw cute, fluffy chicks, but then I realised the birds would be new born; hence the slightly skrungly, goosebumpy appearance.

Some parts of this one were a bit more experimental. I'm really happy with how the actual creature came out, but learning to draw sea and sunbeams was hard, and I'd probably do the clouds differently if I was doing this over again. All good learning, and all good fun :)

think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. that there isn't their life and our life. nor your life and my life. that it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled w it as deep as entanglement goes. v neat i think.

Sometimes it blows my mind that there are people that don’t wear glasses/contacts. Like they can literally see with no aid. Like they wake up and just be out here seeing. What a wild concept.

Little guy parade!! Incoming!!!