Variations: Tiger-dragon, Crocodile-tiger, Cuo-fish, Tiger-cuo

The Yin River and the Yangtze are home to large numbers of Hujiao, or tiger-dragons. A hujiao has the body of a fish with the tail of a snake, and makes a sound like a mandarin duck. It is probably the same as the cuo-fish, whose young hide in their mother’s womb, and the tiger-cuo, which has black and yellow patterns, the ears, eyes, and teeth of a tiger, and is capable of turning into a tiger. All of those are probably sharks.
Eating hujiao flesh prevents hemorrhoids.
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.
Did you intentionally make the body & tail look like a ratfish?
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Not intentionally, but a snake tail makes it kind of unavoidable.
Also ratfishes are cute.
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The most terrifying monster of all: a tiger that quacks.
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It’s a tiger shark.
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Why is it not categorized as a dragon if it is called Tiger-dragon?
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Doesn’t really look like one. But then again, who knows? Probably needs that tag.
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I would say yes, lately I’m doing a project with mythological dragons and that type of category page is very useful to me!
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Will do so then!
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thank you so much!
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I’m a Chinese who just joined this website. I haven’t described this creature in what I have seen and heard. In ancient times, sharks were called “鲛” and pronounced as “jiao”. Chinese is a language with many homonyms, and another word “蛟” is also pronounced as “jiao”, which is the name of dragons in ancient China.
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Thanks for the background clarification!
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