Do the monsters mentioned in Shan Hai Jing really exist?

There are indeed a few "monsters" in Shan Hai Jing that existed in ancient times, but they were included in the category of "monsters" because they have never been seen before, and some of them are monsters that the author exaggerated and artistically adapted. I think most of the monsters in Shan Hai Jing are still in people's imagination, such as combining the characteristics of two common animals to become a new monster, or just seeing an unknown animal and describing it as a very scary monster because of fear or surprise.

First of all, there are animals that we think are real. The llama is now considered as the present camel. According to the description in Shan Hai Jing, "There are many beasts and camels, and they are good at quicksand. Their daily endurance is 300 Li and they weigh 10,000 Jin". People will naturally think that camel's endurance in the desert is lasting. camel's camel and camel's camel are almost the same in pronunciation and characteristics as camel, so we think camel is Camel. The first time I saw a camel, I felt strange. No wonder the ancients regarded them as monsters with two huge bumps on their backs.

Most of the creatures in Shan Hai Jing are fictional, such as the nine-tailed fox, which is a mythical monster. Because the fox has a feminine face, people created the role of the fox, but we have never seen the Kyubi no Youko fox. For example, there are many monsters with human faces and animal bodies in Shan Hai Jing, such as the parallel faces of animals and the birds with owls' faces. Animal lakes not only have human faces, but also bird wings and snake tails. It is not difficult to see that these monsters are just alienation of everyday animals.

In a word, Shan Hai Jing, as a book that records rare animals, will naturally have some monsters like the animals in our zoo now, and there will be totally incomparable monsters. Most of these monsters are due to the lack of advanced observation methods, only to hear their voices but not to see their bodies, plus a lot of artistic images created by imagination.