A comparison of defense mechanisms
A difference in defensive strategies:
bonnacon (top), beaver (bottom, not recommended)

Jennifer Lynn Jordan, author of the blog Per Omnia Saecula, says our beloved medieval animals are weird — at least on Mondays. The bonnacon would like to inform Ms. Jordan that he is not especially weird on Mondays, though he admits he is inclined to be grumpy and to have particularly poor sphincter control on that day. He does think that the ant-lion is rather weird, but ascribes that to an unfortunate choice of parents; and the beaver’s response to danger he finds altogether inappropriate, noting that a vastly superior defense was perfected by his [the bonnacon’s] ancestors long since, one not so likely to lead to the extinction of the species.

Ms. Jordan has been commenting on “weird” medieval animals in the Weird Medieval Animal Mondays (or WMAM) section of her blog for some time now. The comments are witty yet often insightful, and since Ms. Jordan so kindly refers to the Beastmaster’s own The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages site, he [that is, David Badke, aka the Beastmaster] and the bonnacon are inclined to forgive the slightly pejorative term “weird” and recommend Per Omnia Saecula to readers of this blog.