Monsters! by Elizabeth Kay

I've not been too well since I got back from Madagascar (so no change there - I was very ill the first time I went), so forgive me for taking an easy way out and using lots of photos. 

We can’t invent something that is beyond our senses to detect, as we don’t have the right vocabulary to describe it. We don’t have infra-red or ultra-violet vision, we can’t hear infra sound or ultrasound, we don’t have whatever sense it is that allows a murmuration of starlings or the synchronisation swim of a shoal of fish. What we do is to recombine bits of existing creatures, and when we’re after something scary it’s the predators that spring to mind. I used a hyena to create my sinistroms in The Divide.

Dragons tend to be amalgamations of bats and lizards, and may well have originally been inspired by the bones of dinosaurs. Griffons are eagles and lions. When something was first described a long time ago, either in paint or words or, earliest of all, in stone, it pays to have a think about what animals may have been around at the time – and have since become extinct. The roc, a giant three-headed bird of Arabic origin, may have been the result of an early traveller visiting New Zealand, and seeing Haast’s Eagle, which was powerful enough to prey on man. Marco Polo may have added to the mix by seeing the elephant bird of Madagascar, which disappeared in the 1600s. Putting a human head on animal shoulders was always a good way of giving the creature speech and making them that bit more terrifying. The sphinx, the harpies, the minotaur… Anyway, it always helps to have a visual aid so here are some of my photos of carnivorous beasts I have encountered on my travels. Pic'n'mix. And for the really weird, try googling pictures of deep sea creatures or parasites.

Tiger, India

Hyena, Namibia

Komodo dragon, Indonesia

Fossa, Madagascar

Jaguar, Brazil

Giant hog-nosed snake, Madagascar

Leopard, Botswana

Lioness, Kenya

Lynx, Spain