Miscellaneous Creatures in Aelian's On Animals
These are innocuous enough that the information on them isn't enough to fill their own entries.
Peteliae: -Literally means "fliers" -Resemble pale crabs with tiny wings -Generate in the mud [written back when spontaneous generation was considered a viable scientific theory] -Only fly when they're scared and want to escape predators -Can't fly per say, merely lessen their weight and skip away
Fishing Frog: -Also called the angler -A species of frog with "eyelashes" above its eyes, attached to each of which is a small sphere -Sits in deep mud and slime with its lures extended, waiting for fish -Lays hard eggs with rough scales
Winged Scorpion: -Megasthenes says India has winged scorpions of immense size -They give a strong sting like the scorpions of Europe -Apparently there are also winged scorpions in Egypt with two stings [though their size is not stated]
Neades: -Samos was uninhabited by humans in primeval times due to the presence of these creatures -They were savage, dangerous monsters of immense size -Their roar was enough to split the ground. Samians had a proverb which went: "he roars louder than the Neades" -Gigantic bones testified to their existence
Fire Flies: -A species of fly which lives and flies about in flames -If taken outside of fire, they immediately die
Indian Turtles: -In India [presumably just the Indus river] there is a river turtle with a shell as large as a full-sized skiff, or equivalent to ten medimni [about 12 gallons] -Also there are tortoises as large as enormous clods of soil [real precise measurement there bub…] -These tortoises shed their shells -They lie in the soil and farmers must extract them with mattocks as Greeks remove caterpillars from plants















