This Is How Medieval Artists Imagined Animals They Had Never Seen

When it comes to animals, there's little we don't know today. See, even if we don't know, we can always Google it.

What did people do in Medieval times when they heard of far away and exotic animals? Well, according to these illustrations provided by Daniel Holland, they used their wild imaginations to conceive of them.

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This resulted in some very funny images. Holland found these pictures so amusing that he created a Twitter thread with several of them.

We now share them here with you for your viewing pleasure. First up is a rhinoceros with likely the weirdest skin we have ever imagined.

This crocodile has a unique-looking face.

This beaver has the strangest anatomy.

This owl has a human face.

This leopard may have spots but looks rather conflicted about them.

This beaver has a fish tail.

The following two elephants have no ears along with other weird features.

This crocodile looks suspiciously like a lizard.

These lions and bears are straight out of fiction.

This whale is not just the wrong color, it also has eerily human-like features.

Have you ever seen a snail with a pig's face?

This hippopotamus is so strange, you can't even guess what it is.

This oyster looks particularly angry!

We have to say that although we did have a good laugh at these illustrations, we must give their authors credit for their imagination. After all, could we draw these animals much better without ever having seen them? We think not!