Watch the horn, it's sharp!

The Unicorn(along with the Dragon) is prohaps the most popular and well-known of the fabulous beasts, especially in the Western Hemisphere. This is primarily because the medieval Christians adopted the Unicorn and changed its symbolic meanings to fit their religion. To them, it became a symbol of their christ, something the Unicorn never was Origionally. They also made the Dragon symbolize their Devil.

 

Fascination with the Unicorn continues right down to today. For example, the animated movie The Last Unicorn, based on a book by Peter Beagle, is still popular. Statues and pictures of Unicorns are readily avaliable in gift shops. There are a great many books about Unicorns. The Unicorn, along with other fabulous beasts, can also be found in several RPGs(role-playing games).

 

The Unicorn is one of the few fabulous mythical beasts with a shape considered realistic by ourhuman terms. In other words, we are able to visualize the Unicorn as a creature we could possibly meet. Some peoplewant to see and own a Unicorn so badly that they have resorted to an ancient minor surgical method by which they, quite literally, transform two-horned goats and cattle into one-horned creatures. These Unicorns are not true Unicorns.

 

Many Historians claim that the ancients did not know the difference between the gazelle-like Unicorn and the rhinoceros or the antelopes seen in ancient paintings. They totally ignore the fact that the ancient peoples had seperate names for the antlope, rhinoceros, and Unicorn.

 

The word Unicorn literally means "one-horned," and comes from two Latin words, unus, "one;" and cornu, "horn." Thus, the UNicorn is a unique creature with only one natural horn in the center of its forehead. The Unicorn is not an animal that has broken off one horn or the rhinocreros, which has a horn on the end of its long face. It is not a creature that has been surgically altered so both its natural horns grow together on the center of its forehead. A Unicorn is a creature which has never been tamed, owned, or bred by humans.

 

This creature has been depicted in such places as China, Mongolia, the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, India, Japan, Europe, Florida, along the Canadian border, and in many other places around the world. Their distribution appeared to be limited to the Northern Hemisphere. In many of the different places a different description is given for the Unicorn.