The phoenix, hey? Now there's a bird that can spontaneously combust. Which seems pretty weird.
Also weird is the fact that, from what I can make out, it emerged independently in a whole heap of different cultures: Chinese, Greek, Egyptian.
Now I can understand how some mythical creatures came about - dragons, say, are just an amalgam of lots of scary things; unicorns are just the mid point of a horse and a rhino - but a bird that lives forever, pausing briefly every few hundred years to be on fire. That's just weird. I could see how it could crop up spuriously in one culture, but in most of them? Don't understand.
Please can someone explain this to me? Thanks.
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