Variations: Jiuyu, Jiyu
The slopes of Exceedingly Lofty Mountain in China are home to the Chouyu. It is like a rabbit but has a bird’s beak, owl’s eyes, and the tail of a snake. It falls asleep (i.e. plays dead) when it sees people. If a chouyu is seen it is an omen of a locust plague.
Mathieu identifies this animal as the armadillo, but admits with impressive understatement that China is a bit far from the neotropics…
References
Mathieu, R. (1983) Étude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine ancienne. Collège de France, Paris.
Strassberg, R. E. (2002) A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas. University of California Press.
Seems like an Opossum would be a more likely candidate than an armadillo.
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Still, not in China
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me when I see “free tacos”
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I think it’s cute.
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Sometimes people just need to stop trying to fit mythological entities into established ‘real-life’ categories.
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Cryptozoology dies hard.
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