Magical Magic Creature Spotlight: Hippocampus

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Hippocampus

MOM Classification: XXX

A Hippocampus is an animal originating in Greece and the Mediterranean Sea. It’s got the head of a horse and the tail of a fish, which makes it a literal sea-horse (geddit?).

Anyway, while its usual haunt is the Mediterranean there was one caught by Merpeople as far north as Scotland, where it subsequently became their pet (or possibly work animal).

Comments

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I love your drawings!

And - somehow I never noticed this before - what strikes me as exceedingly strange about the hippocampus is that it's part of the human brain. I cannot imagine what, if anything, Rowling meant by that.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

It's the genus name for seahorses, or at least very close to it. I'm not sure exactly what that word is supposed to mean.

[oryx_leucoryx]

From the wikipedia entry for hippocampus:

The earliest description of the ridge running along the floor of the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle comes from the Venetian anatomist Julius Caesar Aranzi (1587), who initially likened it to a seahorse, using the Latin: hippocampus (from Greek: ἵππος, "horse" and Greek: κάμπος, "sea monster") or alternatively to a silkworm. The German anatomist Duvernoy (1729), the first to illustrate the structure, also wavered between "seahorse" and "silkworm." "Ram's horn" was proposed by the Danish anatomist Jacob Winsløw in 1732; and a decade later his fellow Parisian, the surgeon de Garengeot, used "cornu Ammonis" - horn of (the ancient Egyptian god) Amun.[2]

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

And - somehow I never noticed this before - what strikes me as exceedingly strange about the hippocampus is that it's part of the human brain. I cannot imagine what, if anything, Rowling meant by that.

Hippocampi are genuine Greek mythological creatures. They figure as supporting characters in the Percy Jackson series. Percy's younger brother, Tyson the cyclops, calls them "sea ponies."

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh! So a hippocampus is just (literally) a seahorse, and the body part was named that because it looks like a seahorse. Okay.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for doing this series. Your drawings are so cute!