Animals Drawn Wrong

Red Squirrel

Sciurus vulgaris

From "Nieuw printenboek voor kinderen"

by Friedrich Justin Bertuch

1798

Orca

Orcinus orca

From "Gemeinnüzzige Naturgeschichte des Thierreichs"

by Georg Heinrich Borowski Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Herbst D. F Sotzmann

1780-1789

Bottlenose Dolphin (presumably)

Tursiops truncatus

From "L'histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins"

by Pierre Belon

1551

Sperm Whale

Physeter macrocephalus

From "Oeuvres du comte de Lacépède"

By F.D. Pillot

1830

Fennec Fox

Vulpes zerda

From "Compléments de Buffon"

By P. Lesson

1838

Maned Sloth

Bradypus torquatus

Unidentified artist, 1626

"This drawing was probably copied from a painting which Cassiano [dal Pozzo] saw in Madrid in 1626. The original artist presumably working from a preserved specimen to reconstruct its appearance worked on the reasonable assumption that it would have stood upright like other mammals."

Reindeer, aka Caribou

Rangifer tarandus

From "Verzameling van uitlandsche en zeldzaame vogelen"

by J.C. Sepp

Bramble Shark

Echinorhinus brucus

From "A history of the fishes of the British Islands"

Groombridge and Sons,1862-65

Oceanic Whitetip Shark

Carcharhinus longimanus

From "Voyage autour du monde"

Arthus Bertrand

1838

I love scientific illustration, and the impressions and features artistis have focussed on when interpreting nature, especially in the era before photography became commonplace.

But for many reasons - specimen degredation, partial observation, secondhand descriptions and so on - illustrations sometimes end up portraying a peculiar vision of the natural world.