Know your Mythical Beast

Woodcut Manticore

A quick list of the most commonly known mythical creatures found in pop-culture and modern literature.

Basilisk
A creature, variously described as a serpent, lizard, or dragon, said to kill by its breath or look.

Beast of Bray Road
A bear-like creature described as a hairy biped resembling Bigfoot,  unusually large, or an intelligent wolf-like creature apt to walk on its hind legs.

Centaur
One of a race of monsters having the head, trunk, and arms of a man, and the body and legs of a horse.

Cerberus
A dog, usually represented as having three heads, that guarded the entrance of the infernal regions.

Chimera
A mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.

Cockatrice
A legendary monster with a deadly glance, supposedly hatched by a serpent from the egg of a chicken, and commonly represented with the head, legs, and wings of a bird and the body and tail of a serpent.

Duende
A hairy goblin-like mythological creature from Iberian, Latin American and Filipino folklore.

The Fenris Wolf
A giant wolf monster, one of the sons of Loki and Angerboda, chained by Gleipnir but destined to be released at Ragnarok to eat Odin and to be killed by Vidar.

Gorgon
Any of three sister monsters commonly represented as having snakes for hair, wings, brazen claws, and eyes that turned anyone looking into them to stone. Medusa, the only mortal Gorgon, was beheaded by Perseus.

Griffin
A fabled monster, usually having the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.

Harpy
A ravenous, filthy monster having a woman’s head and a bird’s body.

Hippogriff
A fabulous creature resembling a griffin but having the body and hind parts of a horse.

Hydra
A water or marsh serpent with nine heads, each of which, if cut off, grew back as two; Hercules killed this serpent by cauterizing the necks as he cut off the heads.

Lamia
One of a class of fabulous monsters, commonly represented with the head and breast of a woman and the body of a serpent, said to allure youths and children in order to suck their blood.

Manticore
A legendary monster with a man’s head, horns, a lion’s body, and the tail of a dragon or, sometimes, a scorpion.

Minotaur
A monster, the offspring of Pasiphaë and the Cretan bull, that had the head of a bull on the body of a man: housed in the Cretan Labyrinth, it was fed on human flesh until Theseus, helped by Ariadne, killed it.

Pegasus
A winged horse, created from the blood of Medusa, that opened the spring of Hippocrene with a stroke of its hoof, and that carried Bellerophon in his attack on the Chimera.

Scylla
A sea nymph who was transformed into a sea monster: later identified with the rock Scylla.

Stymphalian Birds
A flock of predacious birds of Arcadia that were driven away and killed by Hercules as one of his labors.

Wyvern
A two-legged winged dragon having the hinder part of a serpent with a barbed tail.

Charybdis
The daughter of Gaea and Poseidon, a monster mentioned in Homer and later identified with the whirlpool Charybdis