Is there any reason why Carl Linnaeus thought Pelicans didn't exist? He said he wouldn't have animals never seen before by humans including dragons, and seems to imply that creatures not seen before didn't exist. Well that's fine and all that (and European books on animals often did have mythological creatures) but why was he skeptical about Pelicans and in the first seven editions of his Systema Naturae, to the point of lumping them with Dragons? Ironically, he ended up giving Pelicans its scientific name in a later edition.
Carl Linnaeus and Pelicans
- Thread starter Alex Zetsu
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Because people used to think pelicans feed their young by piercing themselves and offering up their blood. Linnaeus (correctly) thought this was absurd and obviously false. I've heard some people say he thought pelicans didn't exist because he had no knowledge of "the New World bird" but this ignores that pelicans are common in Europe. In the absence of a quote proving otherwise, perhaps he was merely skeptical of the accounts of their behavior, and didn't disbelieve the bird existed. After all, he put barnacle geese on that list because of legends of their reproduction, but would have known well that the geese existed.
Speaking of dragons, it's amusing how Linnaeus's tenth edition has an entry for them, specifying they abide in India and Africa, with just a footnote to call them "fabulosi" "omnes reliqui auctorum".