I Like Unicorns

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I love the unicorn. Always liked horses and feel the mythical unicorn is such a handsome and interesting animal. I feel the unicorn is actually more the size of a goat with tufted hairs on feet and other places on the body. I even found a picture in a magazine one time of a goat that had been born with its horns twisted that made it look like a unicorn. In reading I have found some rather interesting facts about them. Thought I would share them with you: Marco Polo wrote that the unicorns were actually ugly characters. He had mistaken rhinoceros' for them. Ghenghis Khan did not try to conquer India when he was said to have seen a unicorn who bowed down to him. He viewed this as a sign and turned back. Bestiaries, collections in the Dark Ages, gave claim to the medicinal use of animals known during that time. This included unicorns and this was where it was said that virgins had great power over them. Alexander the Great says he road a unicorn into battle. Julius Caesar says he saw a unicorn in the forest in Germany. In Jewish legend the unicorn is said to have enough strength to be able to kill an elephant. The unicorn is said to be extinct now because Noah excluded them from the ark. All down through the ages unicorns have been depicted in history, on tapestries and in folklore and culture. The first depiction of this mythical creature was supposedly found in a cave in France. The Lascaux Caves and was found around 15,000 BCE(Before Common Era). This was actually two horses with two horns drawn close together. Two gold coins circulating during the time of King James III in the 1400's were called the 'unicorn' and 'half-unicorn'. Even the Chinese folklore there is creature called "the Chinese unicorn". The quilin isn't related to the Western unicorn. It has a head of a lion, the body of a deer and the green scales and a long horn covered in froth. The unicorn horn was sold in powdered form at pharmacies in London until as late as 1741. When it was most popular a unicorn horn was worth ten times its weight in gold. Image courtesy of Flickr.com Commons