There are hundreds of mythical creatures linked to legends from around the world. One such mythical creature is the roc, and although no physical evidence has been found to show its existence, the fact that its description is not totally unlike other known creatures, means that it is not impossible that the roc once inhabited the earth.

In its simplest terms the roc was a gigantic bird, one most closely linked with tales from the Middle East and Southern Asia. The roc famously appears in the 1001 Nights (The Arabian Nights), the collection of stories involving Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad. The Roc indeed appears in two stories concerning Sinbad.

A roc was the means by which Sinbad escaped a shipwreck, although the bird deposited Sinbad into a giant nest at the top of a mountain from which there was no escape. In the nest though there was also an egg, hundreds of times bigger than normal hen’s egg. Sinbad would escape by tying himself to the bird’s leg.

The second story concerning the roc tells of how Sinbad’s crew kill a baby roc as it emerges from its egg. In retribution the adult rocs destroy Sinbad’s boat by raining down boulders onto it.

These stories describe the roc as being large enough to block out the sun, able to lift up and devour elephants, and white in colouring.

Stories involving the roc would initially appear to have been backed up with eye-witness accounts of Marco Polo (1254-1324) in his Book of Travels, and the much travelled Ibn Battuta (1304-1369). Marco Polo gave a description of the bird that had the bird living on Madagascar, the giant bird having a wingspan of sixteen yards. Ibn Battuta believed he had seen a roc, but not close enough to provide any detail, but he did describe the fear that seamen had for the bird. In both cases though, exaggeration seems to have been expressed.

There are large birds that exist today and fossil records for even larger birds in the relatively recent past.

Taking Marco Polo’s Madagascar as a starting point, then the island was home to an enormous bird, the elephant bird, Aepvornis maximus. Three metres in height, and the largest bird know to exist for certain. The Elephant bird though was not a raptor, nor was it able to fly.

In New Zealand though there are fossils of two giant eagles, although their wingspan was only three and a bit yards, not the sixteen described by Marco Polo. Maori tradition though does have these birds preying on humans.

Some mythical creatures come about because of the exaggeration of the known, because people are listening to second-hand or third-hand descriptions of real creatures, or because people are making a creature up to explain the unknown. There is no real way to ascertain how the stories of the roc evolved, but the roc does add a sense of fantasy to a tale.