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What kind of being did a sailor see, when he was confronted with a mermaid? A demon, a fairy, a monster, or only an extraordinary marine mammal? Transmitted by the tradition of ancient natural history the European universities faced many creatures belonging to natural science as well as to mythology, which still could be observed throughout the world. While medieval sholarship treated those beings as subjects for demonology, early modern scholars started to rationalize the sirens and satyrs and developed new models of explanation. Throughout hundreds of academical disputations the debate on hybrid creatures can be followed up to the time of Linné and Buffon and the zoological classifications of the 18th century. This study reconstructs the discussions of hybrid creatures as part of the Early Modern change of paradigms and the longue durée of ancient and medieval natural history with the help of five examples, sirens, satyrs, giants, pygmies, and dragons.

Comparative religion --- Animals, Mythical --- Natural history --- Animals, Mythical, in literature --- Demonology --- Identification --- History --- Study and teaching (Higher) --- Animals, Mythical - Europe - Identification - History --- Natural history - Study and teaching (Higher) - Europe --- Demonology - Europe - History --- Animals, Mythical, in literature. --- History.

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"Our 2500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most Talkative Bird Bruce Thomas Boehrer" "'As both a fiction writer and a lover of parrots, I was delighted and enlightened by Parrot Culture. This is an enchanting book."---Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" "'Engrossing ... Bruce Thomas Boehrer concentrates his well-stocked mind on what over the centuries we humans have done to, and done with, parrots."---Times Literary Supplement" "During the Renaissance, horses---long considered the privileged, even sentient companions of knights-errant---gradually lost their special place on the field of battle and with it their distinctive status in the world of chivalric heroism. Parrots, once the miraculous, articulate companions of popes and emperors, declined into figures of mindless mimicry. Cats, which were tortured by Catholics in the Middle Ages, were tortured in the Reformation as part of the Protestant attack on Catholicism. And sheep, the model for Agnus Deiimagery, underwent transformations at once legal, material, and spiritual as a result of their changing role in Europe's growing manufacturing and trade economies. While in the Middle Ages, these nonhumans were endowed with privileged social associations, personal agency, even the ability to reason and speak, in the early modern period they lost these qualities at the very same time that a new emphasis on, and understanding of, human character was developing in European literature."

Psittacidae [family] --- Felis domesticus [species] --- Zoology --- Animalia [kingdom] --- Meleagris [genus] --- Ovis [genus] --- Equus caballus [species] --- Literature --- anno 1400-1499 --- anno 1600-1699 --- anno 1500-1599 --- Europe --- Animals in art. --- Animals in literature. --- Animals, Mythical, in literature. --- Characters and characteristics in literature. --- English literature --- European literature --- Symbolism in literature. --- Djur i litteraturen --- History and criticism. --- Thematology --- History and criticism --- Character sketches --- Characterization (Literature) --- Literary characters --- Literary portraits --- Portraits, Literary --- Signs and symbols in literature --- Symbolism in folk literature --- Animal painting and illustration --- Pets in art --- Wild animals in art --- Zoo animals in art --- Cultural Studies. --- Literature. --- Medieval and Renaissance Studies.