I recently learned the reason why medieval drawings of animals are so weird is because the artist had, of course, never actually seen the animal and was just going off of what somebody else remembered.

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So we basically ended up with a bunch of weird police sketches.

[–] atomicorange@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

It’s like… the body of a fish, but it has like a puppy face. It has flippers instead of legs.

[–] Wicket1138@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 9 months ago

Some of these drawings look like drawings of Wolptertingers. So, they might very well be very accurate.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I really dig #3 and #4

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

The 4th one specially looks pretty close.
Might even have been some species with wider mouths at the time.

[–] almost1337@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

Bottom left is clearly a sea lion