Like a Centaur, But For Snakes!

Hello Nerdfighters!

I was listening to the most recent episode of the pod, Episode 129: The Worst Guest Books, and I came across a conversation that I feel needs to be discussed further. In this episode, Hank and John Green were answering a question from Brea about the structure of a snake's digestive system, and in true Dear Hank and John fashion, the conversation devolved into a discussion of the existence of humanoid snakes. It went something like this...

John begun like so:

 "I've got an image in my head right now of a snake, but it has semi-normal arms and legs and it walks upright. It's really freaking me out pretty bad...It has human arms and legs, but snake sized."

To which, John elaborated more:

"What we haven't yet invented is a humanoid snake, Like a centaur, but for snakes."

And finally, Hank had a revelation:

"Well if its a centaur for snakes, then it's got a human body that sticks up out of the snake. It's a snake that ends in like a human torso and I feel like that does exist."

After what I assume to be a quick trip to the Wikipedia article "List of hybrid creatures in mythology", Hank mentions that there are a few such things in existence, like Echidna, a woman-snake monster from Greek Mythology. This got me thinking.... what do these human-snake hybrids look like? What other surprising animals have humanoid depictions? Here's what I found:
_________________________________________________________________________________

According to that article I mentioned above, there are centaur-esque variants for all sorts of animals: goats, birds, fish, snakes, tortoises, scorpions, and loads of other variations and combinations. The most obvious of which is the mermaid. In fact, we already discussed mermaids a bit here on Re: Hank and John, check it out here if you want to learn more about what mermaids of all types probably eat on a day to day basis. Other ones that I recognized were the Sphinx (lion+human+sometimes bird), Sirens (bird+human), and Fairies (human+insect).

But putting normal and obvious aside, (because what's really interesting about normal?) here's a list of a few of the more fun and unique human-animal variants I had never heard about.

1. Snakes - Nāga
Aside from Echidna, whom Hank mentioned, there are many other human-snake hybrids. One that caught my eye was Nāga. Nāga is a general term used in Indian religions that describes deities taking snake-like form. Nāga has variants in Hinduism, Buddhism, and other traditional Asian cultures.

While doing this research, I was wondering why this sounded so familiar, but I then found out that the female version of a Nāga is called a Nagini. For any of you Harry Potter nerds out there, you'll recognize that Nagini also the name of Voldemort's horcrux-snake companion. Now, Nagini the horcrux isn't quite a human-snake hybrid, but she does have some magical abilities that put her above normal Earth snakes.

Like I said, this is only one variant of human-snake creatures, and there are many others out there, but I decided to stop my probing here to minimize the amount of times I have to see images of snakes on Google. I'm not their biggest fan. And if you're more curious about Nāga, check this link out.




2. Crows - Karasu Tengu
This one was particularly interesting considering Nerdfighteria's newfound interest in befriending crows. If you're not familiar with this, check out Episode 127: How to Befriend a Crow from Dear Hank and John.

Turns out, Tengu is a god-like figure in Japanese folklore that has long noses that resemble beaks. The specific traits and variants are a bit confusing, BUT a Karasu-Tengu is a specific variant that contains crow-like features. There's even an entire website dedicated to them that will have much more knowledge if you're interested: karasu-tengu.com (and it has German and English translations!).





3. Hippopotamus - Taweret
Taweret caught my eye mostly because I was curious what it would look like. Taweret is an Egyptian goddess who contains traits of humans, hippopotamuses (hippopotami?), crocodiles, and felines. The origin of Taweret makes sense, seeing as hippos are native to African territories. In fact, apparently hippos were of particular interest to the ancient Egyptians. There are also three other hippo goddesses in Egyptian lore: Ipet, Reret, and Hedjet.

What I liked about Taweret is that she is bipedal, meaning she walks on two feet. This gives her a much more human like quality than some of the other creatures I learned about.




Well, that's all for now. What are some of the human hybrid creatures that I missed? Do you have any favorites? What would you create if you could create one?

If I had any artistic ability, I would definitely create a human-tuatara mix, I may be biased because of Turtles All The Way Down (a new young adult novel by none other than John Green that may or may not have something to do with tuatara), but nonetheless, it would be really cool.

I hope you enjoyed this little dive into the ancient human-animal hybrid creatures. As always, please let me know if you there's any other dubious advice from Dear Hank and John that you'd like me to research or try out!

DFTBA,

Liana