My Mother the Manticore

A mythical creature of ancient fables, the manticore keeps company with the better-known unicorn, dragon, and griffin. Descriptions of the manticore's features sometimes differ (some accounts mention porcupine quills or poisonous spikes, for example; others depict the tail as having a serpent's head), but the animal is by all accounts a dreadful beast. The word manticore came to English through the Greek mantichōras and Latin mantichora, and is probably ultimately of Iranian origin. Etymologists think it is related to an Old Persian word for "man-eater."