Search results for " imaginary beings"

Fantastic morphologies: animal form between mythology and Evo-Devo

2020

Since ancient times, man has shown a genuine passion for the recombination of visual elements in unusual and extraordinary forms; but, if the ancients admitted the existence of mythological creatures, today we are fully aware that their existence is limited to the ontological domain of the “merely thinkable” because imaginary beings are irreconcilable with physical and biological laws. In this article I try to elucidate what differentiates from a morphological point of view the imaginary beings described by the pens of poets (such as Sphinx, mermaids and centaurs) from bizarre but existing animals (i.e. the small South American Axolotl, the Yeti Crab, etc.) or from some specimens belonging …