Megafauna Week: Elasmotherium.

Ah, unicorns.  What would be cooler than meeting a unicorn? Wouldn't it be awesome if unicorns were, y'know, real? Then that unicorns VS zombies book would actually have some merit, and bronies would not be up in our faces anymore.

The good news: Macro Polo saw one. Here's what he wrote:

They have wild elephants and plenty of unicorns, which are scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead . . . They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions.

It has long since been decided that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros, not a pretty white unicorn found on some chick's binder. Still, fossil evidence suggests that the traveler may have been onto something:

Chaaarrrlliiiiieee!

If the narwhal and oryx were not inspiration for the unicorn, one might suggest fossil evidence of the Elasmotherium, a relative of the rhinoceros. It lived from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, and may have been around as recently as 50,000 years ago - old enough for a few people to have seen it and drawn it in caves. They spanned much of Asia and into Europe.

The most outstanding trait of this giant herbivore was the single horn on its face. Although "unicorn" or "monoceros" may refer to almost anything with one horn, only Elasmotherium has the horn placed right where the modern notion of "unicorn" has it - on the forehead. It was characterized as being capable of galloping based on having longer legs than most rhinoceros-like animals. We think it ate grass like a horse, too. Even with narwhals and oryx around, the Elasmotherium strikes one as a very likely basis for unicorns indeed.

Cave drawing from France.

^{So just how big was the real unicorn? Think 15-16 feet from head to tail. A basketball player could barely reach the top of its shoulder. It weighed 3-4 tons. Although far from the petite, slender creature depicted everywhere nowadays, Elasmotherium was still pretty amazing as far as unicorns go. Sorry, Twilight Sparkle was completely made up.}

Cheer up, fantasy fans. Unicorns were once real. Sure, they weren't the prancing ponies we know today, but they were still around. The best part is, you'll never see a Christian arguing that unicorns never existed; they're in the Bible.

Myth Week: Unicorns.

 

Unicorns used to be solid badasses. Neither masculine nor feminine, the unicorn was able to cure any poison with its horn. Unicorns were lustful and wild, only able to be placated by a virgin girl. If you were not a virgin, you could safely be prepared for some serious pain. (The Eastern qilin is a different beast.)

Then My Little Pony and Lisa Frank got a hold on unicorns. No longer were they able to gore the knights of old even faster than a dragon. They were forever stamped on little girls' binders, notebooks, and customized by rabid MLP fans.

So much for badassitude.

 

But how did the unicorn get started, anyways? Was there really a one-horned ungulate that could cure poison AND kick ass?

In a word, no. Most unicorn horns (alicorn) came from a sea creature called a narwhal, which has already had its own entry. Other sources of alicorn included walrus tusks and the horns of various ungulates. It was basically a sugar pill for anyone hoping for a poison cure. Different story if their issue was a calcium deficiency.

1500 USD for a yearling pair of this nigh-extinct animal!

The particular ungulate that inspired the unicorn was probably the scimitar-horned oryx, which, when seen from the side, looks like it has only one horn. This creature is now only found on American game preserves, and has its own entry if you are more curious about it. Honorable mention goes to the rhinoceros, which Marco Polo mistook for a unicorn, and the aurochs, which, as the word "re'em," is frequently mistranslated as "unicorn" in the Bible.



Then there are instances of "unicorn deer." The roe deer above has a rare mutation that gives it only one antler. Having the 'horn' smack dab in the center is even rarer. We don't know if it can cure poison or has a lust for virgin women, but slap a white coat on a deer like that and it would look a lot like a unicorn. One researcher, Gilberto Tozzi, said that the unicorn deer was literally a "fantasy made real" - thus finally giving meaning to the title of this blog!

Creature Feature: Okapi.

Imagine if a deer and a zebra somehow, by some ungodly chance in nature, had a baby. That is only half of the weirdness that went into the okapi.


Stop looking at my butt.

The weird-looking ungulate above is called an okapi. Like giraffes and zebras, they are native to Africa. Instead of the oh-so-loved African savannah, okapi live in montane rainforests; their coat has become water-repellent to deal with the weather. They are herbivores, but consume charcoal and clay for a few extra minerals.

The okapi, despite all appearances, is not related to zebras at all. Their closest living relative is the giraffe. It shows in the okapi's large ears, ossicones (on males), short manes and very, very long blue tongues. The okapi's tongue is about a foot long - long enough to clean its eyes and the entirety of its ears (both inside and out). The okapi is as much a living fossil as the coelacanth.


Did this okapi eat yesterday's slug or is he just happy to see us?

The okapi was known by the native peoples of Africa long before the Europeans ever found a single specimen. It was recorded over 2,500 years ago in an Ethiopian carving at Persepolis. It was largely believed to be a sort of "African unicorn." After its discovery by Europeans, carvings and images of it began popping up left and right.


This better be pretty friggin' important. Is the meadow on fire?

These animals, though not endangered in and of themselves, are elusive and threatened by habitat loss. Although they are fairly common in zoos now, I can never seem to catch these guys on display. Sucks.


Or, alternatively...