I read an article on dragons in the New York Times today. It touches on all the usual Jungian-fears-meet-dinosaur-fossils business, but there was a passage I found particularly amusing:
Dragons were clearly a hybrid, part snake, part bird and part bat. In the 17th century, they were explained by the newly popular "spermatick principle," which held that semen formed creatures and that the egg was a mere food source. Sometimes, scholars surmised, sperm from different species could mix and make a monster.
Mr. Lhwyd of the Oxford museum argued that semen from fish and snakes could rise high into the air with evaporation, rain down again and end up in the high aeries of eagles and vultures. In a lucky process called "fermentational putrefaction," the mix could produce a winged snake.
So, there's that.
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