The medieval Christians of Europe believed something bizarre about pelicans. They believed that the pelican

could feed her starving young, even resurrect them by cutting open her own breast and feeding them her blood.

For this ability, they saw the bird as an analog of Christ, a symbol of self-sacrifice.

I'm going to read you a quote from a hymn by Thomas Aquinas.

Lord Jesus, good pelican, wash my filthiness and clean me with your

blood, one drop of which can free the entire world of all its sins. End quote. He's calling Jesus a good

pelican. I'm told it sounds better in the original Latin.

You got to understand, people went crazy with this myth.

The Queen of England got herself painted with a pelican on her chest.

Churches were slapping pelican iconography all over the walls.

Beasteries were writing about this behavior

as if it were a fact. However, there is not a drop of evidence that this behavior ever takes place.

There is no evidence whatsoever that pelicans can feed their young blood. Nobody has ever seen the pelican cut themselves for their children.

And even after a century of meticulous scientific observation, nobody has seen anything even slightly analogous.

So, why am I bringing this up?

People believe random, strange things about animals in all cultures throughout history,

so why is this interesting?

Well, it turns out some people believe the same thing in India.

Bizarrely, there is an almost identical tale from India, a continent away, that tells of the

pelican resurrecting her young with her own blood. And that is a little suspicious. That probably isn't random.

Today we are going to try and find out how two isolated cultures came up with the same mysterious belief.

Today, we're going to talk about the Dalmatian Pelican.

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