baticeer:

scarfmouse:

ada-or-ardor:

mediumaevum:

General Attributes

A bat is not a noble bird. It is unlike other birds in that it gives birth to live young instead of laying eggs, and it has teeth. Bats gather together and hang from high places like a bunch of grapes; if one falls, all the rest also fall.

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 81): The bat is the only flying creature that bears live young and feeds them with its milk; it also carries its children in its arms as it flies.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 7:36): The bat, unlike other birds, is a flying quadruped, resembling a mouse. It has its name (vespertilio) from the time when it flies, after twilight. It flies about driven by precipitate motion, hangs from frgile branchs, and makes a sound like a squeak.

@scarfmouse: rubbish bats.

LIKE A BUNCH OF GRAPES

ok aside from the DRAWING (what a bat that is), my favorite part is how insistent these medieval people were about bats being birds

“the bat is unlike other birds in that it has teeth and looks like a mouse and milks its young instead of laying eggs and basically does not resemble other birds in any way at all

but it’s a bird

we swear”

Medieval taxonomists are hilariously adorable. They also thought birds grew from trees, hyenas could change their sex, and lions and ants could mate and have offspring.

Also, this was in the Camel entry on that website:

“Camels grow wild with the desire to mate; this desire can be destroyed by castration […]”

NAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

reblogged hotel-denouement

originally mediumaevum