She frowned. “Sorry - those are the beasties with the head of a lion and the body of an ant, right?”

“‘sright.”

“And aren’t they dying out because the lion bit only eats meat and the ant bit only digests grain so it just starves to death?”

“Yeah?”

She waited for him to connect the dots. After a minute she decided he probably wouldn’t. “I think they might be a lost cause, mate.”

babe wake up new postexodus species dropped. stop looking at how shitty i drew the legs stop sto

yap under cut

Alright buckle up motherfuckers because I never had a chance to present my temporary hyperfixation to the class of 100 students the way I was promised so I'm going to make it everybody's problem.

MYRMECOLEON!

Also known as the ant-lion, this magnificent beast would be nature's way of saying "Fuck this, I give up" - had it existed.

Because it's literally a half-ant-half-lion hybrid.

Pictured like this in Hortus Sanitatis (which has quickly become my favourite bestiary, we'll get to that)

the ant-lion is of course a mythical being. Which would be a reasonable end to the tale of this wonderous and possibly cursed creature, sure.

EXCEPT!

Just like many (or at least enough to be funny) creatures, this wonderful beast was quite possibly created due to a linguistic slip-up, a ye olde typo, if you will, a glitch in translation due to a mistake in the translated script, from possibly the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

So why is it in Hortus Sanitatis? Because one of the things this specific bestiary and herbiary is know for is that it includes mythical and folklore creatures and animals, which is made even more fun when you consider the author didn't really bother much trying to separate them from one another (As far as I know, I'm making my way through it with a damn dictionary so my progress is slow and a little confusing.) (It also has like a whole thing about uroscopy, which could mean nothing.)

If you want to check out the surrounding text, I took the illustration from page 550/913 of Hortus Sanitatis as scanned here.

Bestiaries in general have this fun tendency to use translated texts from other sources which can often be blamed for such fun things like accidentally inventing a whole new animal through a typo or accidentally filing a giraffe under chameleon (I'm pretty sure somebody far more educated on this topic than me made a post about that specific instance already).

So basically, Myrmecoleon is a lil or big fella that probably wouldn't be able to actually survive if real and was possibly created due to a typo being mistranslated by accident, which manages to tick off almost every box to make it my favourite creature rn.

【Panicout, the Potted Plant Pokemon】

【Shyrake, the Mandrake Pokemon】

There was once a town where a lot of women and girls would have a lot of pain. One day unicorns found them and decided to do something. (SinceUnicorns are known to find young women (mainly virgins in some myths but not here)). So the one town would regularly get visits from unicorns. They go around to find women and girls in town and boops them with their noses. This gives the women and girls very small amount of magic which they can use for things like pain relief when period cramps come by or for migraines they get. But there is a bad catch to these unicorns. They accidentally out Trans women and girls, including some varieties of Nobinary woman/girls and some varieties of gender fluid folks too. This is due to them still obviously being women/girls of different types and them being in pain but the unicorns can't really distinguish them like we do. All they know we're those two simple facts. Because of this, some people get angry and reject the unicorns! Some even push them away, others run away and some people act on the behalf of the accidentally outed and pushed away the unicorns themselves.

The unicorns were just lost and confused but despite their simple minds, they managed to make a plan. They brought in reinforcements to help "Boop" everyone thinking that was the issue. If everyone is in pain, they wouldnt be able to think clearly. The unicorns would still boop the women/girls. The meredogs would go up to the men/boys and boop them with their paws or even lick their cheeks if the guy was friendly enough. Lastly their friends, the winged myrmecoleons (antlions), would fly towards Non-binary folks and wait until they get their attention before sticking their tiny paws out to paw at the NB's hand or fingers so they can give a tiny bit of magic to them- although over time, they became able to fly up to the NB directly and boop their noses directly.

Because of this, magic not only became more abundant in the town, but some folks had multiple types. Realizing the only thing the animals wanted to do was to help take away their pain (which is the main function of the magic they handed with the boops), they found ways to help them back. Not only by being kinder to one another to lessen the pain, but by being more open minded to one another, a cepting trans folks, and treating eachother kindly. Some even began helping those who wanted (or in some cases needed) to transition.

“Myrmecoleon Fanart” © Reddit user “EtrianDemifiend”, accessed at Reddit here

[The myrmecoleon is another medieval bestiary monster originating from mistranslations and misunderstandings; it takes the figurative name “ant-lion”, for an insect, all too literally. @a-book-of-creatures​ has a good explanation here. There’s also already a Pathfinder 1e monster of the same name, but it’s just a giant bug, not a gonzo chimera. The name I’ve gone with, then, is an alternate name listed by @a-book-of-creatures​. I’ve also borrowed some of its spell-like abilities from the Shin Megami Tensei version of this creature, of which the above image is fanart.]

Formicaleon CR 6 CE Magical Beast This bizarre creature has the forequarters of a lion and the hindquarters of an ant. Its front two legs are muscular and end in clawed paws, and its four hind legs are spindly and thin.

A formicaleon is a strange hybrid creature that makes use of its chimerical appearance to deceive and mislead. They are sometimes known as “ant-lions”, not to be confused with the ordinary animal of the same name. Legend has that the foreparts of a formicaleon can eat live on only meat and the hindparts on only grain, and so the formicaleon starves for lack of food. This is a lie formicaleons tell to make themselves seem pitiful and weak. Formicaleons will often wheedle their way into the good graces of other creatures, claiming to have divinatory abilities or offering their skill as a magical healer. Then, they mooch off of their benefactor, and kill and eat them when they get tired of the charade.

Formicaleons are wandering creatures, and typically solitary. They do possess a certain amount of self-loathing, and may engage in tricks and lies even when not strategically valuable. They prefer to fight lone targets rather than parties, and will often flee from a concerted defense. There is some truth to the legend of formicaleon dietary peculiarities—they require both animal and vegetable matter, and can be remarkably picky in what they eat and when. Formicaleon kills are often marked by strange mutilations, as the monsters eat only a few of the organs and move on, leaving the rest for scavengers.

A formicaleon is about eight feet long and stands four feet at the shoulder.