this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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A Comm for Historymemes

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[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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 2 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

Middle right is pretty close

[–] almost1337@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago

Bottom left is clearly a sea lion

[–] Wicket1138@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 12 hours ago

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

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 6 hours ago

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