Bonnacon

The bonnacon (also called bonasus or bonacho) (Ancient Greek: βόνασος or βόνασσος) is a legendary creature described as a bull with inward-curving horns and a horse-like mane.

Medieval bestiaries usually depict its fur as reddish-brown or black. Because its horns were useless for self-defense, the bonnacon was said to expel large amounts of caustic feces from its anus at its pursuers, burning them and thereby ensuring its escape.

Term

The term is derived from Greek βόνᾱσος (bonasos), meaning "bison".

Strabo when describing the Zebu at the festivals in India, used the term bonasus.

Textual history

The first known description of the bonnacon comes from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia:

There are reports of a wild animal in Paeonia called the bonasus, which has the mane of a horse, but in all other respects resembles a bull; its horns are curved back in such a manner as to be of no use for fighting, and it is said that because of this it saves itself by running away, meanwhile emitting a trail of dung that sometimes covers a distance of as much as three furlongs (604 meters or 1,980 feet), contact with which scorches pursuers like a sort of fire."

The popularity of the Naturalis Historia in the Middle Ages led to the bonnacon's inclusion in medieval bestiaries. In the tradition of the Physiologus, bestiaries often ascribed moral and scriptural lessons to the descriptions of animals, but the bonnacon gained no such symbolic meaning. Manuscript illustrations of the creature may have served as a source of humor, deriving as much from the reaction of the hunters as from the act of defecation. The Aberdeen Bestiary describes the creature using similar language to Pliny, though the beast's location is moved from Paeonia to Asia:

In Asia an animal is found which men call bonnacon. It has the head of a bull, and thereafter its whole body is of the size of a bull's with the maned neck of a horse.