VMs: Catoblepas

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The description of the "catoblepas" by Pliny does seems to fit
a gnu. (I can easily believe that "bloodshot eyes" turned into "deadly gaze"
after being translated into Latin from, say, Bantu by way of Ethiopian,
Aramaic and Greek ...)

However the scales in the woodcut must have come from a pangolin:

http://www.pangolin.com/PangolinPic.html

http://www.awf.org/images/0/photos/9889_pangolin.jpg

The beast on f80v also seems to have the scales of a pangolin. They
are growing in the wrong direction, though; and neither head nor tail
are a good fit to the real pics. As Gabriel said, those details, as
well as the "pillbug" body shape, suggest an armadillo.

All the best,

--stolfi
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