Corcodil

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Meet - Korkodil. Nothing personal, just facts.

The first known reports of corcodilians can be dated fairly accurately, although this was in ancient times.

Two tribal leaders - Sloven and Rus - began to look for "useful places", "like the eagles of sharp-crying flight through the desert."

After 40 years (according to another version, 14) wanderings, they reached a huge lake named after Sloven's sister Ilmera (Ilmen). On the bank of the Volkhov ("the call then" Mutnaya ") the city of Slovensk the Great (now Izborsk) was built, a little after 3099 years from the creation of the world (2409 BC)." And from that time the newcomers of Scythia began to be called Slovenes … " …

Further, the legend expounds an ancient tradition:

"The big son of this prince of Sloven - Volkhov, a displeased and a sorcerer, fierce in people then by demonic tricks and dreams, creating and transforming into the image of a fierce beast of a cork-maker and lying in that river Volkhov the waterway. "Our Christian true word … About this accursed sorcerer and sorcerer - as if evil was broken and strangled by demons in the Volkhov River and the demonic dreaming of the cursed body was carried up the Volkhov river and erupted on the bank against this magical town, which is now called Perynya (Perynsky skete). And with many weeping from that neveglas, the cursed one was buried with a great funeral bastard. And the grave poured over him is high, as if there is a rotten one. And for three days of that accursed throne, the earth wakes up and devoured the vile body of korkodelovo. And his grave was waking up over him in the bottom of hell, those who are still like this, as if they will tell, the sign of the pit is worth not filling"

"Korkodil is an aquatic beast, always crying and sobbing, but it never ceases to eat a man."

"Korkodil is a great beast, and a fish from head to tail, its legs are four and its tail is great and sharp, and its backbone is one bone, like black stone and zoo-sharp like thorns, like sawing teeth, when it turns blue, there is a whole ousta." (Annals of George the Monk)

"Korkodil is an animal. Imat the head of a basilisk. And his ridge is like a comb, and his trunk is serpent, and when he tears off his head from the body, it cries at her in vain. He hits them with his trunk. And when he blinks, then all the lips happen."

M. V. Lomonosov, who expounded the legend of the Magus turning into a corcodile, interpreted it as follows:

"This should be understood that the aforementioned prince on Lake Ladoga and along the Volkhov, or the then-called Muddy River, plundered and, by his ferocity from his likeness, was nicknamed this carnivorous beast."

In the Icelandic saga about Njala, a remarkable situation is described: (972) "… east of the coast of Balagardssida (south-western coast of Finland) Torkel went one evening to fetch water for his friends. There he met a sea monster and fought with him for a long time. that he killed the monster. From there he went to the land of the eastern …"

Simeon of Polotsk (Vertograd multicolored, 1680)

Almost everywhere and everyone (St. George, Kozma, Demyan and Theodore Tyrone) poke a stick in the animal, and in Old Ladoga, a young man next to a girl who is on a leash, like a dog, is walking an amphibian.

Many sources tell about corcodiles quite casually, as if they were cats or stray dogs. They are mentioned in the Galicia-Volyn Chronicle, in the PSRL for December 14 (2), 1582 about the invasion of the Korkodiles in Novgorod:

"… of the same summer, I went out of the river and the way of shutting up the Korkodila lutia, there were a lot of people who lived, and people were consumed by people and prayed to God all over the earth. And I hid the packs, and beat some others …"

Seven years after the appearance of the Corcodiles near Novgorod, in 1589, the representative of the English trading company Jerome Horsey wrote in his diary:

"I left Warsaw in the evening, crossed the river, where on the bank lay a" crocodile serpent "(poisonous crocodile), which my people tore the belly with spears. such sympathy and Christian help that he quickly recovered."

There is a legend about how the city of Krakow was founded: In a cave that still exists today, under the Wawel Hill, there lived a serpent that devoured people. This snake was killed by Krak (lat. Krakus), throwing him to eat a ram filled with burning sulfur; tormented by thirst, the serpent began to drink water from the Vistula and burst. The grateful people proclaimed Krak king and Krak founded a city on that place, giving him his name. Krakow stands on the very Vistula River, on the banks of which Jerome Horsey saw a dead crocodile.

In the newspaper "Pskovskie vedomosti" of the late nineteenth century, it is said that "a host of corcodiles crawled out of the Velikaya River, and many dogs and cats were devoured, as well as humans suffered."

There is a letter from John's suitor to the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus (XII century), in which he writes:

"In our country, elephants are born and live, one-hump and two-hump camels, hippos, corcodiles, metagalinaria, giraffes, finzers, panthers, wild donkeys, white and red lions, polar bears and whitebirds, dumb cicadas, griffins, tigers, lamias (genus of mermaids), hyenas ".

The memoirs left by the Austrian ambassador Sigismund Herberstein passing by in 1526 (S. Herberstein. Notes on the Moscovite affairs. St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 178):

"This area is replete with groves and forests in which you can observe terrible phenomena. It is there to this day there are a lot of idolaters who feed some snakes with four short legs like lizards, with a black and fat body, having no more than three spans at home. in length and called "Givuoites" (maybe "animal", or maybe the Lithuanian "gyvate" - a snake); it is on the right days that they cleanse their house and with some fear reverently worship them, crawling out to the supplied food, until then, until those who are full return to their place."

Misfortune is attributed to one whose serpent deity was poorly fed. In another place he writes that "the Russian boyars in Muscovy contain bloodthirsty dinosaurs in huge tubs with water for their own amusement."

Matei Stryjkovsky said that he saw a dungeon under the main altar in the Vilna Cathedral Church, where sacred snakes were kept and fed in pagan times.

In the second half of the 19th century, during the inventory of the utensils of one of the churches of Belarus, the following form was encountered:

“As we opened the church cellar, we saw shkilets, very ancient, because they were no longer yellow, but white-white. many krali (ornaments) are scattered."

Large black lizards more than half a meter long lived in the Tatar bog in Minsk. The last capture of such a "Tsmok" happened in 1885. It was dissected, and the skeleton was kept for a long time in the office of the director of one of the city's real schools. However, in the turmoil of World War I and the revolution that followed it, this exhibit has not survived to our time.

Tsar Peter Alekseevich, upon returning home from his first trip abroad, where he got acquainted with various curiosities, decided to create his own cabinet of curiosities. For this, he ordered to send a decree throughout Russia in which he commanded to collect various "freaks and monsters." For not being sent to the capital city, the perpetrators were punished with whips and deprivation of office. Here is one of the documents of that time - the report of the Arzamas zemstvo chief Vasily Shtykov:

"The summer of 1719 June 4 days. There was a great storm in the district, and a tornado and hail, and many cattle and all living creatures perished … And a serpent fell from heaven, scorched by God's wrath, and stank disgustingly. And, remembering the Decree by God's grace of the Sovereign of our All-Russian Peter Alekseevich from the summer of 1718 about Kunshtkamor and the collection of various curiosities for it, monsters and all kinds of freaks, heavenly stones and various miracles, this serpent was thrown into a barrel with strong double wine."

Modern philologists "decipher" the ancient Russian word "korkodil" as consisting of two words: "crust" and "dil" - (in Slavic "horse"). Korko-dil is a horse covered with hard skin and scales.

The memory of the corcodiles is also recorded in toponyms. In the Moscow region, near the town of Klin, there was once the Savior-Korkodilny Monastery (now the village of Spas-Korkodino).

Even in those days, Western partners were distinguished by special care and humanism, though not always to people …

See also about crocodiles from: Brno, Ponte Nossa, Curtatone, Macerata, Milan, Buerzi Verona.

What is known about crocodiles? Can they make long-term migrations in the marine environment?

Crocodiles (not alligators) demonstrate a number of adaptations for life in salt water: they have lingual salt glands, highly keratinizing epithelium of the oral cavity, which prevents ion diffusion and osmotic water loss, and the cloaca plays an active role in osmoregulation. In salt water, they turn on a complex system of osmoregulation, including renal response, post-renal modification of urine in the cloaca, and excretion of excess sodium chloride by the salt glands.

But despite the fact that large crocodiles can spend many months in salt water without visible harm to themselves, the features of their osmoregulation are still not able to ensure a constant stay at sea.

On land, crocodiles are rather slow and clumsy, but some species are sometimes capable of making significant transitions, moving away from water bodies for several kilometers, and even hunting on land.

The Australian crocodile lives well in coastal seas, and the males of this species can reach 7 m in length and a weight of 2000 kg. Now a little about body temperature.

Crocodiles spend a significant part of the day in water. They go to the coastal shallows in the morning and late in the evening to take "sun baths". To cool, the crocodile opens its mouth and water evaporates from the mouth.

In small individuals, daily fluctuations in temperature can exceed 5 degrees, but due to the peculiarities of behavior and body structure, in large crocodiles, daily fluctuations in body temperature can be very insignificant - about 1 degree Celsius in summer and about 1.5 degrees in winter. Thus, large crocodiles are characterized by inertial homeothermy. However, they should not be identified with truly warm-blooded animals (in our time - birds and mammals), in which the constancy of body temperature is maintained due to their own metabolism (heat production), and not by long cooling.

Well, crocodiles do not chase the sun and are sometimes forced to cool their own bodies, and besides, they are able to partially maintain the temperature on their own. On the Yangtze River in China, there are small alligators reaching one and a half meters in length. So the "Chinese" have gotten used to enduring small frosts - up to minus 8. At this time, they burrow into holes and fall asleep.

Why did they not survive in our country and in Europe to this day? How can you not mention the Little Ice Age and remember the picture where children in Holland skate along the canals?

Well, and to survive 1816 most likely definitely did not work out. Although … I did come across a couple of unconfirmed references, apart from confirmed cases …

Sergey Mulivanov