There’s a surprising lack of camel-based mythical creatures that I could find! If you know of any please let me know, I’d love to hear about them!
It was believed for a time that giraffes were a cross between a camel and a leopard. The giraffe’s Latin name is Giraffa camelopardalis, to reflect the archaic name.
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The red ghost from Arizona, it’s a giant camel with a skeleton rider.
This reminds me of a joke from The Owl House that giraffes were banished from the world of magic and witches for being too weird. And then in S3, the cast had a very short montage, where one of the situations was going to the zoo and get to see a giraffe in-person.
Have any mythics kept track of their culture from before going into hiding?
The Allocamelus is a mythical creature with the head of a donkey and the body of a camel, some depiction of the creature can be traced back to the 16th century,
Verethragna is a persian god depicted sometimes as a camel.
And there is also a divine envoy sent to encounter the prophet Salih in an iranian mural, although I’m pretty convinced that was supposed to be a regular camel.
From the top of my head that’s the few instances a camel or camel like creature appeared in any mythology, but it’s most likely due to the fact camels were tamed by people only very recently and thus don’t have much ancient history at all attached to them.
The Danja/Thunder Camel is a giant camel-creature from Malta with a long neck! Found it on Book of Creatures.
It’s actually one of my life goals to write urban fantasy one day, and include a were-giraffe as a side character.
Mostly just because I am so sick and tired of wolves, wolves and more wolves in that context, but also just because giraffes are cool animals way too underrepresented in fiction.
Giraffes used to be called caméléopard in French
In Castle Waiting there is a magical beast Opinicus with a camel head and tail. And a lot of other not-quite-stories.
Are Djinn found in West Asian/ North African Avalons? Is there magic strong enough to grant wishes in canon?