People From The Past Tried To Draw Animals Based On Hearsay With Hilarious Results

One of my favorite subjects as a child was biology, mainly due to the fact that I got to see the wide range of creatures the animal kingdom has to offer. Without ever stepping foot in a South American jungle or on an African safari, I was able to peer at some of the most exotic animals as they actually exist. We tend to forget that before the advent of photography and then the internet, people would only hear about exotic animals from different parts of the world through word of mouth from travelers. 

You have to see the drawings and paintings of faraway animals that show what people really thought they looked like.

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These days, the television and the internet allow us to see just about any animal that exists, even if we've never seen them in person. 

We just know what animals that are found halfway around the world look like. 

Back in the day, though, people had heard of exotic animals only through word of mouth but hadn't ever seen them in the flesh — or even in a photograph. 

You ever play the game "Telephone" before? Yeah, knowing what an exotic animal looked like back in the day relied on many people getting the description right. 

Think about it. If a lion was spotted in Africa, someone would have to travel all the way back and relay that description to someone else and so on...

This allows us to see what people thought these animals looked like through drawings they made. 

I'm tellin' ya, this elephant did a better job of painting itself...

While we're talking about elephants, let's take a look at what people in 15th-century Italy thought they looked like.

Going by word of mouth alone, the artist originally conceived the elephant as a horse-like creature with a long nose and a coat of hair. The large ears didn't make it into the description...

When they did get the ears semi-right, they seemed kind of small and these "elephants" demonstrated powers that most elephants don't have (namely sucking large objects into their trunks). 

The color was a bit too white and the way they rest on the ground is very dog-like. 

This one tells me that someone overstated the strength of elephants. 

They are big, but they aren't big and strong enough to carry entire portions of castles on their backs. 

Enough of elephants, though, you have to see what they thought crocodiles looks like...

This drawing, from sometime between 1090 and 1120, depicts what people thought was a crocodile. 

This picture was found in an encyclopedia written by Lambert, the Canon of Saint-Omer. The crocodile in this drawing has a very human-like face with the bodily features of a cat. The only thing they got right was the long tail. 

After a few hundred years past, the crocodile started to take on more of its true form. 

This painting from the Rochester Bestiary in 13th-century England at least shows the scaly texture of the crocodile, but the creature still has the head of a mammal. 

From the same source, this is a "colorful panther."

It's clear that colorful exotic animals have never graced the eyes of this artist. Check out the hooves!

Some "lions" from the 1511 Ashmole Bestiary. 

Hey, at least the mane made it through word of mouth. 

Here is a medieval drawing of a giraffe. 

That animal looks very Dr. Seuss to me...

Luckily these days we know exactly what these animals look like!

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