So this week's Bestiary Posting is the Gaersnae, the 'king of crawling things'. No clue what this one could be, but 'crawling things' makes me think of creepy crawlies, and what makes a creepy crawly? Lots of skittery little legs. The king of the crawlies must then be whatever has the most legs - a millipede! Added bonus - gaersnaes make a foul odor, and millipedes also make a foul smelling defensive toxin. That said, I don't think millipedes generally eat birds. So to help it out, I gave it some large predatory mandibles. It's also described as having a gaze, so I made sure it's compound eyes were big and forward facing. Since it's a king, I also gave it a little spiky 'crown' behind it's head.
I wanted to draw a dramatic pose, so went with it being attacked by a weasel. I kept my sketch pretty quick and loose, and I'm not familiar with insect anatomy, so the gaersnae's body segments are pretty uneven. We'll just ignore that.
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
[Etymology redacted] … it is the king of crawling things, who flee when they see it, because it kills them with its scent. It will even kill a man just by looking at him. Indeed, no bird can fly past unharmed by its gaze but, however far away, will be burnt up and devoured in its mouth. The Gaersnae can be conquered by weasels. Men put them into the caves where the Gaersnaes lie hidden. The Gaersnae, seeing the weasel, flees; the weasel pursues and kills it. For the Creator has made nothing without a remedy. The Gaersnae is half-a-foot in length, with white stripes. Gaersnaes, like scorpions, seek out dry places; after they have come to water and bite anyone there, they make that person hydrophobic and send them mad. The creature called [redacted] is the same as the [redacted], or Gaersnae; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns.
Remember to tag posts with #Gaersnae so folks can find them.
My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum
Pencil sketch, then lines in Sailor fude nib fountain pen, using Diamine Sepia ink.
Thought process under the cut…
"[Etymology redacted] … it is the king of crawling things, who flee when they see it, because it kills them with its scent. It will even kill a man just by looking at him. Indeed, no bird can fly past unharmed by its gaze but, however far away, will be burnt up and devoured in its mouth. The Gaersnae can be conquered by weasels. Men put them into the caves where the Gaersnaes lie hidden. The Gaersnae, seeing the weasel, flees; the weasel pursues and kills it. For the Creator has made nothing without a remedy. The Gaersnae is half-a-foot in length, with white stripes. Gaersnaes, like scorpions, seek out dry places; after they have come to water and bite anyone there, they make that person hydrophobic and send them mad. The creature called [redacted] is the same as the [redacted], or Gaersnae; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns."
Okay, so the king of crawling things. This was where I had to make my first decision; what kind of creature is the Gaersnae? I was 90% sure I was going to draw an invertebrate for this one (since we don't get much opportunity to do so), but I ended up making it a serpent given that the definition of 'crawling' seems to be mostly focused on going about on your belly.
There is also the note of hissing (obviously some insects hiss by expelling air from their spiracles, like the adorable Madagascar hissing cockroach), and its gaze (I imagine that snakes have -slightly- better eyesight than most bugs…).
The 'kills them with its scent'? Well, some serpents such as the hognose snake release a foul odour when playing dead, so perhaps it's a variation on that?
As we mentioned, it is the king of crawling things, and what is a king without a crown? When I was thinking of making it an invertebrate I considered making it look a little like a royal sceptre, with an egg-case resembling an orb & cross, but the horned viper literally has a horn-like scale above each eye (that can be folded back when traversing burrows); just expand that number by a few, and hey presto, one snake with a crown!
(I also gave it a pelvic spur for extra rizz - not that any venomous snakes have this, but it's pretty cool.)
As an aside, did you know that birds probably evolved earlier than snakes? :)
I was going to represent the stripes, but when I got to inking the scales I got carried away and forgot (imagine that some of the scales are different colours!).
I'm not quite sure how its burning gaze works, but have a bird crashing down to earth behind it (it'll grab that as a snack later!).
In the burrows beneath the earth, we can see that some mean ol' person has released a hreksong to go hunt the gaersnae - seems like everyone in the bestiary likes to hate on snakes :(
A new entry in the Maniculum Bestiaryposting Challenge: The Gaersnae!
It is described as "the king of crawling things, who flee when they see it, because it kills them with its scent." I defined crawling rather broadly as "moving on all fours", because the bit about killing with its scent immediately made me think of a skunk. The author also noted that "after they have come to water and bite anyone there, they make that person hydrophobic and send them mad". This sounds like rabies to me, which can be an issue with skunks.
This specific Gaersnae is not rabid, it's just showing off another one of its particular skills: "Indeed, no bird can fly past unharmed by its gaze but, however far away, will be burnt up and devoured in its mouth." The unfortunate bird being fried here is based on the last illustration in this post, which explains why owls might have been scribbled into the margins of medical manuscripts.
I'm pretty sure I have an idea of what the real creature is, so I decided to diverge from that and came up with something like a cross between a crayfish and a scorpion.
The Gaersnae
The Gaersnae (genus Gaersnae) is an arachnid found worldwide (though it is considered an invasive species in Australia), particularly in warm, dry regions. All species have long bodies and tails—ranging from four to nine inches in length—with strong claws and four pairs of legs; nearly all are gold or brown in color with white stripes running perpendicular to the axis of their body.
Gaersnae spend most of their time in shallow burrows, from which they can poke their heads out and observe the passers-by. At the sight of a threat or potential prey, they are thus prepared to either flee deeper into the burrow, or emerge and go on the offensive, dependent on their assessment of the situation.
At the end of a Gaersnae's tail, there is a sort of fan set behind what appears to be some kind of pincer. This "pincer" acts as protection for the Gaersnae's greatest weapon—a gland which secretes a foul-smelling toxin. When it is shut, no venom is let out, while once it is open the Gaersnae is able to unleash punishment on its enemies and prey.
The Gaersnae is capable of shooting its venom over six feet in nearly any direction, including directly upwards. If it is trying to ward off a predator, it may first pose with its tail aloft and pincer open, in an attempt to frighten the predator off without resorting to using its venom. Any creature hit by it will immediately find the scent overpowering, and larger predators will usually flee without needing another reason. More slowly, depending on the size of the target and whether the venom found an orifice, the venom will induce a slight stiffness, making it difficult for prey to flee or fight back, and on some occasions dropping small birds from the sky. The Gaersnae may then consume its prey while it is still alive.
A Gaersnae may also choose to release its secretion more slowly, as a means of scent-marking to deter predators from its burrow. This of course has the secondary consequence of warding prey animals away as well, so it is not often done unless the Gaersnae is in poor health or if it is marking the place it buries its eggs, to keep them from being eaten before they can hatch.
The only natural predator of the Gaersnae is the weasel, which appears to be unbothered by its scent and unaffected by its venom. Despite having no issues resisting the Gaersnae's toxin, weasels seem to have a dispreference for ingesting it, as they will often leave all or most of the Gaersnae's tail uneaten, even when the rest is consumed.
One quickly doodled "gaersnae" for the bestiary challenge.
This one seems to have things that ring partially true for like 4 different animals so I'm very interested to find out what it is at the end of the week!
My gaersnae has ended up a sort of snakey rat, with stripes, bright fur round its eyes that makes them look bigger, and vestigial legs bc sometimes that happens if you live in a cave.
This one seems to be flying under the radar, identification-wise, much more than I expected, which is a pleasant surprise. I don't have anything else to add at the beginning of this post. The entry people are working from is here:
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
[Etymology redacted] … it
And if you don't know what this "bestiaryposting" business is, you can find an explanation and all previous posts at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.
Now, art in roughly chronological order:
@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has made the entirely logical decision that the "king of crawling things" should be whichever creature has the most legs, and drawn us a millipede large enough to fight a weasel. I think this is a good and sensible direction, and that's a quality depiction of a millipede/weasel fight right there.
@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has gone in a more rodent-y direction, with the interesting detail that, as a result of living in caves, its legs are gradually becoming vestigial. I think this is also quite clever, and the rat is pretty cute.
@cheapsweets (link to post here) decided that the "king of crawling things" should have no legs, as maximum crawling happens when one is flat on one's belly. Hence our crowned snake -- complete with a bird going down in flames near the top of the drawing, and a weasel/Hreksong invading the burrows near the bottom. I think the "crown" works really well, and it's always nice to see a callback to previous beasts. As usual, CheapSweets has provided an interesting and informative explanation of their design in the linked post -- I particularly liked the phrase "pelvic spur for extra rizz".
@coolest-capybara (link to post here) is running with the idea of a creature that kills with its scent (and has white stripes), so we have this amazing picture of a skunk zapping an owl out of the sky. The medieval skunk is excellent -- I think if they had skunks in medieval Europe, that's probably how they would have drawn them -- and the scribbly owl is just delightful. Check the linked post for additional observations and a link to a short but informative source about medieval owls.
@pomrania (link to post here) also has some skunk inspiration going on here, though their version has some extra legs and a kind of boar-like face. A very informative series of drawings about how this thing can kill you -- I particularly like the one with the little scroll reading "deadly!!"
@strixcattus (link to post here) has contributed an invertebrate, which I think makes this one of the only entries that's gotten more than one of those. And that's a solid drawing of an arthropod -- I also like the lettering at the bottom right there. As usual, I implore you to read the write-up in the linked post, where the animal is re-imagined from the perspective of a modern naturalist.
Okay, Aberdeen Bestiary:
So this is actually a case of the artist's preconceptions making them mess it up a bit. You may notice that it does not fit the description. It also sticks out a bit in the context of the bestiary, because it's in the "snake" section of the manuscript.
What's happened here is that this is the entry for the basilisk, but the artist has drawn a cockatrice. This is not actually unusual, as the two mythical beasts are hopelessly entangled in the tradition; I looked into it a bit, and it seems like there's actually some confusion about where the cockatrice even comes from. Probably the reason the two creatures have similar powers attributed to them is because the cockatrice kind of inherited that aspect from the basilisk.
(See, e.g., Breiner, Laurence A. "The Career of the Cockatrice." Isis, vol. 70, no. 1, 1979, pp. 30–47.)
Anyway, the basilisk is so called because it is the king of snakes -- basileus is Greek for "king", and -iskos is a diminutive. Little king.
(The translation provided by the University of Aberdeen, "king of crawling things," is unusual -- the Latin reads "rex serpentium". It's possible this translation choice is because of the flexibility of the term "serpent".)
This is a creature originally described by classical authors and then passed along through medieval European sources. It has white stripes, often some sort of "crown" on its head, is venomous, and is sometimes said to distinguish itself from other snakes by holding the front part of its body regally upright... yeah, it's obviously a cobra that's been telephoned and exaggerated into being ludicrously deadly. Just swap out "weasel" for "mongoose" -- I think that's pretty clearly a case of some author who distantly predated scientific taxonomy just going, "looks like a weasel to me".
Also, this entry ends with:
The creature called sibilus is the same as the regulus, or basilisk; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns.
I did say I wanted to do some of the old bestiary challenges, even knowing what they were. So! First up, gaersnae.
Crawling things? Kills men by looking at them? Hisses? Conquered by weasels? Sounds like a cobra -- of the spitting variety. Though spitting cobras have painful venom, not typically "deadly," but whatever.
White stripes? A rinkhals has white/cream stripes quite obviously on its neck. And some photos show them on the body, too, though I don't know if they're all rinkhals (rinkhalses???) or some similar-looking serpent, just color differences, etc. Threw the stripes on the main body too just to be sure.
After biting people, the bitten becomes hydrophobic and is driven mad, apparently. Well. that's not good. Obviously, the gaersnae frequently contracts rabies. No offense to the gaersnae, but I don't really want to meet it.
