BONNACHON

Pliny the Elder described the Bonnachon in his 1st-century Natural History as a cow-like creature with a horse’s mane and inturned horns. Its habitat was the deserts and grasslands of Asia. If a passing traveller should encounter one, it was not the Bonnachon’s horns that were the most terrifying, but the animal’s propensity for ejecting such a great load of dung from its rear end that the ground would be littered for more than two acres. The dung was acrid and would burn any trees, plants, people and animals that were in its vicinity.