A TWO-TAILED ALPINE IMPOSSIBEAST - A SHUKERNATURE PICTURE OF THE DAY

Even among the exceedingly diverse, and decidedly different, fauna of cryptozoology, occasionally there comes along what can only be described as a truly impossible beast - or, as I like to call such exotica, an impossibeast. And here, as the latest ShukerNature Picture of the Day, is one such example. Appearing in an early 18th-Century tome about Switzerland, Itinera per Helvetiae, written by Austrian naturalist-historian Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, this engraving depicts an anomalous Alpine impossibeast that was categorised as a dragon, despite sporting an extravagantly furry pelage, an unquestionably mammalian face, and two long, slender, exceedingly hirsute tails so independently mobile that each seemed to have a life of its own! If anyone has any notion of what this extraordinary creature might have been inspired by, I'd be very happy to hear from you.