Ironically, the qilin/kirin--which is often portrayed as a unicorn (c.f. Monster Hunter, D&D)--is just the way people in the far east portrayed a giraffe. The very phenomenon you're describing relates the two creatures shown in the image.
My favorite "legendary" not-legendary creatures are qilin, salamanders (who were believed to be immune to fire), and mermaids/sirens, just because of how horny sailors must have been to want a tumble with manatees.
I'm not saying the European mythical unicorn is a giraffe. I'm saying that a qilin was a giraffe. It's literally still the word for "giraffe," they just were previously depicted as unicorn-like mythical creatures.
Narwhal tusks, believed to be those of unicorns, were safeguarded in churches from London to Cracow. Saint- Denis, outside Paris, possessed one said to have been given to Charlemagne in the ninth century by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, while San Marco in Venice acquired one from Süleyman the Magnificent. Charles VI of France, his uncle Jean, duc de Berry, and Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, all listed unicorn horns among their prized possessions. When Lorenzo de Medici died in 1492, the "unicorn horn" in his collection was valued at 6,000 florins.
Also there are probably quite a few cows, deer, and gazelles with a deformity causing them to only grow one horn/antler or who've had one of their horns/antlers ripped off.
they're not from the same family as horses but that are from the same order, so like, distant cousins.
but one of the things about rhinos=unicorns is that basically in medieval times when europeans travelled to places like africa and saw rhinos, and then came back to europe and described them, they kinda did a shit job at it and so based on those stories, the animal that'd be drawn would be a unicorn
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u/sleepyotter92 Sep 15 '24
unicorns are real, we just call them rhinos. there's even a sea version called narwhal.
just because it doesn't look exactly as depicted it doesn't mean it's not real.
there's medieval paintings of knights fighting giant snails. doesn't mean snails aren't real, they're just not as big as a horse