This week’s episode is about two solved mysteries that aren’t exactly solved after all, the water owl and the devil bird! Let’s figure out what those two might really be! Cuvier’s Beaked Whale: A swordfish, swording everywhere it goes: Seems definitive: A possible culprit for the devil bird, the spot-bellied eagle owl: The brown wood owl. Nice hair, dude. Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. I got my air conditioning fixed, so you’ll be happy to know I’m not sitting in front of the microphone sweating like last week. This week I wanted to look at a couple of animal mysteries that are supposedly solved. Imagine me cracking my knuckles to get down to business, because they’re not actually solved but you and I are going to solve them right now. If you do a search for mythical animals that turned out to be real, the water owl is on just about every single one. The water owl is supposedly a huge sea monster with the body of a fish and the head of an owl, with big round eyes. According to the medieval myth, the water owl (also called the Xiphias) was supposed to ram ships with its sword-like beak, or slice through them with its huge dorsal fin. According to those solve mystery animals lists, it turns out that the monster was really a Cuvier’s beaked whale. But in TH White’s 1960 translation of the Book of Beasts, a 12th century bestiary, Xiphias is clearly identified as a swordfish. Elsewhere it’s also called gladius, “so-called because he has a sharp pointed beak, which he sticks into ships and sinks them.” Not coincidentally, the swordfish’s scientific name is Xiphias gladius, which basically means “sword sword.” Directly under the Gladius entry is that of the serra, which “is called this because he has a serrated cockscomb, and swimming under the vessels he saws them up.” I don’t know what the serra is supposed to be and neither does TH White. It’s possible it was a muddled account of the sawfish. There is no entry for sea owl, water owl, or anything similar in any bestiary I could get my hands on. It’s possible that the Xiphias if medieval bestiaries and Cuvier’s beaked whale comes from the whale’s scientific name, Ziphius cavirostris, with Ziphius spelled differently from the swordfish’s Xiphias, although I’m pretty sure the pronunciation is the same. Xiphos means sword in Greek and the whale does have an elongated beak, although nothing like a swordfish’s, and not even very long compared to other beaked whales. Another common name for it is the goose-beaked whale, which is a lot more accurate. Its face and its beak look nothing like an owl’s, nor does it have a very big dorsal fin. Cuvier’s beaked whale is a relatively common whale found throughout the world. It grows up to 23 feet long [or 7 meters] and can be gray, brown, or even a reddish color. It’s a deep diver and habitually feeds on squid and deep-sea fish. In fact, it holds the record for the longest and deepest recorded dive for any mammal—over two hours underwater and over 9800 feet deep [or nearly 3,000 meters]. That’s almost two miles. Its flippers fold back into depressions in its sides to reduce drag as it swims. Like other beaked whales it has no teeth except for two tusks in males that stick up from the tip of its lower jaw. Males use these tusks when fighting, and many whales have long scars on their sides as a result. The swordfish also has no teeth, but it does have a hugely elongated bill that it uses not to spear fish, but to slash at them. It’s a fast, scary-looking fish that can grow up to 15 feet long [or 4.6 meters], and it does have a pronounced upright dorsal fin. And while its bill isn’t exactly owl-like, since owls all have short bills, it does have huge round eyes. In other words, the water owl isn’t Cuvier’s beaked whale. It’s probably the swordfish. And if anyone can point me to a primary source that mentions an animal called the wate...