Cockatrice - Tumblr Posts

Here's the cockatrice profile! (I think i might paint this one) . The cockatrice is a small wyvern, about the size of a turkey. It's a highly aggressive species, particularly against mammals for some reason. It's not know why, one theory is that mammals around its size are fought or chased off as they represent competition for its food sources, or that the cockatrice makes their territories as safe they can for their offspring. It's not certain wether this behaviour is gender based, or based on the presence of young or anything at all really. Its aggressive nature is also highlighted in its throat pouch; which is adapted to build up a potent blast of noxious and paralyse inducing gass, instead of the normal gass spray/leak of the archosaurian wyverns and the wyrms. The throat pouch is used for either display purposes, or for food/water storage, like the pelican, in many archosaurian wyverns. It is said the mere gaze of a cockatrice is enough to paralyse or even kill one, but its more likely that if you're close enough to look one in the eye, it's probably realised its foul gass in a steady manner instead of its usual blast or spew. . I've started designing several wyverns of late, and have sorted them in archosaurian (dinosaurs, crocodiles, pterosaurs) and squamatan (lizards and snakes) lineages, that I'll go deeper in on at a later time. I enjoy this a lot, and I need it for a long running world building project I've first gone to work at more the past year. Might do a proper creature profile of the designs as I get them done🤔 #smaugust #smaugust2018 #wyvern #dragon #cockatrice #basilisk #mythology #art #artist #beast #creature #creaturedesign #creaturedesigner #conceptart #conceptartist #sketch #sketchbook #worldbuilding #fantasyart #fantasy #paleoartist https://www.instagram.com/p/BnCx9naBiNN/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1tv4xjloqn0u6

Impromptu Bestiary Page, “Cockatrice”. It’s basically a chicken dragon. Literally the dumbest creature ever invented. I love it. 

[ENG]

I have become lazy..

[RUS]

Я обленилась..

Some Lazyness' references

Reference with cockatrice and Lazyness? by mamory1236

Pages and Mamoly 2023 by me

reverse cockatrice doodle that i forgot to post (dragon head and chicken body)

🌞 pheasant cockatrice and kestrel griffin 🌞

COCKATRICE

Day 16: Fowl

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The Cockatrice is a cryptid said to live in the village of Wherwell, Hampshire, England. This cryptid currently serves as the mascot for the series, “Good Mythical Morning.”

So, what you're telling me here, is 'basilisk' is the latin term for Short King, right...? ;)

This was another interesting one... As you note, when I think of Basilisks, I always think of something much closer to this;

...which always reads very scorpion-like to me (the multip legs, beak that could easily be translated as claws, and long tail), though minus the legs I can also see it being a reference to a cobra.

It's also amusing to me that in Pliny's account, the weasel/hreksong kills the basilisk due to its own smell...

This also feels doubly relevant to me after finding out about 'rooster's eggs' having listened to the @maniculum podcast episode about the Tournament of Tottenham (again, more relevant for the cockatrice, but as you say, these two beasts seem hopelessly entangled...)

Bestiaryposting Results: Gaersnae

This one seems to be flying under the radar, identification-wise, much more than I expected, which is a pleasant surprise. I don't have anything else to add at the beginning of this post. The entry people are working from is here:

And if you don't know what this "bestiaryposting" business is, you can find an explanation and all previous posts at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

Now, art in roughly chronological order:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has made the entirely logical decision that the "king of crawling things" should be whichever creature has the most legs, and drawn us a millipede large enough to fight a weasel. I think this is a good and sensible direction, and that's a quality depiction of a millipede/weasel fight right there.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has gone in a more rodent-y direction, with the interesting detail that, as a result of living in caves, its legs are gradually becoming vestigial. I think this is also quite clever, and the rat is pretty cute.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) decided that the "king of crawling things" should have no legs, as maximum crawling happens when one is flat on one's belly. Hence our crowned snake -- complete with a bird going down in flames near the top of the drawing, and a weasel/Hreksong invading the burrows near the bottom. I think the "crown" works really well, and it's always nice to see a callback to previous beasts. As usual, CheapSweets has provided an interesting and informative explanation of their design in the linked post -- I particularly liked the phrase "pelvic spur for extra rizz".

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) is running with the idea of a creature that kills with its scent (and has white stripes), so we have this amazing picture of a skunk zapping an owl out of the sky. The medieval skunk is excellent -- I think if they had skunks in medieval Europe, that's probably how they would have drawn them -- and the scribbly owl is just delightful. Check the linked post for additional observations and a link to a short but informative source about medieval owls.

@pomrania (link to post here) also has some skunk inspiration going on here, though their version has some extra legs and a kind of boar-like face. A very informative series of drawings about how this thing can kill you -- I particularly like the one with the little scroll reading "deadly!!"

@strixcattus (link to post here) has contributed an invertebrate, which I think makes this one of the only entries that's gotten more than one of those. And that's a solid drawing of an arthropod -- I also like the lettering at the bottom right there. As usual, I implore you to read the write-up in the linked post, where the animal is re-imagined from the perspective of a modern naturalist.

Okay, Aberdeen Bestiary:

So this is actually a case of the artist's preconceptions making them mess it up a bit. You may notice that it does not fit the description. It also sticks out a bit in the context of the bestiary, because it's in the "snake" section of the manuscript.

What's happened here is that this is the entry for the basilisk, but the artist has drawn a cockatrice. This is not actually unusual, as the two mythical beasts are hopelessly entangled in the tradition; I looked into it a bit, and it seems like there's actually some confusion about where the cockatrice even comes from. Probably the reason the two creatures have similar powers attributed to them is because the cockatrice kind of inherited that aspect from the basilisk.

(See, e.g., Breiner, Laurence A. "The Career of the Cockatrice." Isis, vol. 70, no. 1, 1979, pp. 30–47.)

Anyway, the basilisk is so called because it is the king of snakes -- basileus is Greek for "king", and -iskos is a diminutive. Little king.

(The translation provided by the University of Aberdeen, "king of crawling things," is unusual -- the Latin reads "rex serpentium". It's possible this translation choice is because of the flexibility of the term "serpent".)

This is a creature originally described by classical authors and then passed along through medieval European sources. It has white stripes, often some sort of "crown" on its head, is venomous, and is sometimes said to distinguish itself from other snakes by holding the front part of its body regally upright... yeah, it's obviously a cobra that's been telephoned and exaggerated into being ludicrously deadly. Just swap out "weasel" for "mongoose" -- I think that's pretty clearly a case of some author who distantly predated scientific taxonomy just going, "looks like a weasel to me".

Also, this entry ends with:

The creature called sibilus is the same as the regulus, or basilisk; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns.

I am not aware of any creature called sibilus.

i just know there was a weird little girl in the middle ages out there stealing snake's eggs and putting them in her family's chicken coop in the hope of hatching a basilisk

creature design sketch dump

So fatty, so good :P

BRAWK!!!

**Spoilers**