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Giant Animals in Hebrew Lore

It is remarkable that travellers of the second and possibly the first
millennium before the present era, brought home these stories:

The ruler over the sea animals is Leviathan. His fins radiate
brilliant light, its smell is foul.^[4](1) Leviathan spouts out
water.^[5](2) This description, one may guess, is of a whale.

Ziz is the ruler over the birds; it is monstrous in size; its wings
are so huge that unfurled they darken the Sun. Great bird Ziz slaps
his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles
and the vultures, blench.^[6](3)The span of the wings of the
pterosaurs ranged from 27 feet upwards to an incredible 69 feet,
whereas the span of the wings of the large eagles is less than 10
feet.

Behemot (not to be confused with the animal that bears this name at
present) is the most notable representative of the mammal kind.
Behemot matches Leviathan in strength. It had to be prevented from
multiplying and increasing, else the world could not have continued to
exist. It is deprived of the desire to propagate its kind.

As the above-mentioned travellers could not have visited the American
Museum of Natural History on their voyages, nor any other museum of
paleontology, nor could they have read modern books on dinosaurs and
all their classes, it is puzzling to read their description of the
monstrous animals and of their behavior, and also of the weapon used
by the largest land animal. In mortal combat between the gigantic
beasts, Leviathan kills by a blow of its fins, and Behemot kills by a
lash of its tail.^[7](4)^ The modem paleontologists wondered at the
largest land animals lack of weapons for attack or defense, which
would have made it easy prey for every attacker, and supposed that the
animal used its tail as its weapon.

Equally interesting is the description of the gigantic female Reem
when heavy with young. Leviathan, Ziz, and Behemot are not the only
monsters; there are many others, and marvellous ones, like reem, a
giant animal, of which only one couple, male and female, is in
existence .... The act of copulation occurs but once in seventy years
between them . . . The act of copulation results in the death of the
male. He is bitten by the female and dies of the bite. The female
becomes pregnant and remains in this state for no less than twelve
years. At the end of this long period she gives birth to twins, a male
and a female. The year preceding her delivery she is not able to move
. . .. For a whole year the animal can but roll from side to side,
until finally her belly bursts, and the twins issue forth. Their
appearance is thus the signal for the death of the mother reem.^[8](5)

The problem of the statics of the dinosaurs, with their pillar-like
legs, vexed modern scholars. The larger species are classified as
amphibians, though no adaptation for life in water is found in their
fossilized remains; they are classified so because, by wading in
water, they would have a lesser load of body to carry. That this does
not solve the question is shown above. The animals were apparently not
adapted to the life conditions and did not survive.

To be more exact, the animals adapted themselves to conditions, but
the Earth changed these conditions completely, and more than once. The
variations of the force of gravitation became, more than anything
else, fatal to the large dinosaurs.
References

1. L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, I (Philadelphia, 1942), p. 28. 
2. Ibid., p. 4. 
3. Ibid., pp. 4-5. 
4. Ginzberg, I, p. 28. 
5. Ibid., pp. 30-31. 
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