The first written account of a unicorn in Western literature comes from the Greek doctor Ctesias in the 4th century BCE. While traveling through Persia (modern-day Iran), he heard tales of a single-horned “wild ass” roaming the eastern part of the world from fellow travelers.
Italian explorer Marco Polo found unicorn stories didn't quite match up to reality when he traveled through Asia and saw what he thought was a unicorn for the first time, in the 13th century — an account detailed in "The Travels of Marco Polo" (Penguin Classics, 1958).
Long before the pearly white unicorn of European lore, a one-horned, magical animal was said to roam the Eastern world: the Asian unicorn. First mentioned in written stories around 2700 BC, this unicorn is described as a creature of great power and wisdom.
The earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book Indika ("On India") described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black.
It was Pliny the Elder who, in the 1st century CE, finally gives this single-horned animal the name by which we know it today: the monocerous, or unicorn.
After years of believing unicorns were nothing more than mystical fairytale creatures, researchers just definitively proved that they did actually exist — though, not as pretty horses with pearly white manes, wings, and horns.
Elasmotherium sibiricum — better known as the Siberian unicorn — looked more like a rhino than a horse. In fact, this species split from what we know as rhinos today around 43 million years ago. It lived on the Eurasian grasslands ranging from southwestern Russia and Ukraine to Kazakhstan and Siberia.
The unicorn might not be very old at all, and might have still been kicking until 39,000 years ago. This places its extinction “firmly within the late Quaternary extinction event”, between 50,000 and four thousand years ago, in which nearly half of Eurasian mammalian megafauna died out.
According to CB Insights, as of June 2022, there are more than 1,150 unicorns worldwide. Forty-seven countries have at least one unicorn, with the U.S., China, and India leading with 612, 174, and 65, respectively.
The Saola is so elusive that no biologist has seen one in the wild. Now they are racing to find it, so they can save it.
Where does ? Unicorn Face emoji come from? The unicorn face emoji (or just unicorn emoji) depicts the head of a unicorn, an ancient mythic creature known in European folklore as a rare white horse with a horn on its head and magical healing powers.
As unicorns don't have wings, we don't think they can fly. However, the common mix up with Pegasus has led to cross over in the magical powers of unicorns, represented in movies and literature.
The first written evidence we have for unicorns appears in ancient Greece, not (as you might expect) in writings of mythology but in 'natural history' writings, once again on the ancient Near East. The earliest accounts come from the writer Ctesias in the 4th century BCE.
Unicorns last walked the Earth as recently as 29,000 years ago, new study shows. Unicorns were real — in case you didn't know.
In 2021, Mensa Brands, founded by Ananth Narayanan earlier this year, made a new record by becoming the youngest Indian unicorn when it achieved the coveted valuation within 6 months.
A long-extinct animal known as the Siberian unicorn—which was actually a long-horned rhinoceros—may have walked the Earth 29,000 years ago, at the same time as prehistoric humans, researchers say.
According to TechCrunch, dragons are four times rarer than unicorns.
The last unicorn
This natural scarcity may have been one of the factors that tipped the Siberian unicorn into extinction some 39,000 years ago, around the same time that Neanderthals went extinct and some time before cave bears and spotted hyenas were last seen in Europe.
With a value of $200 billion, ByteDance, the Chinese tech which owns TikTok, is officially the most valuable unicorn in the world, according to The CEOWORLD magazine's Top 500 Unicorn Startups 2023.
Absolutely. Unicorns have babies but they are born without their horn. The horn starts to grow when they are about 1 year old.
Unicorns have big appetites and their basic diet consists of grass, plants, flowers and berries. However, as with humans, a unicorn's diet varies depending on its habitat.
The life span of unicorns has never been recorded but is known to surpass 1,000 years. They are believed to maintain their youth until death is only weeks away. The secret to this longevity is the strong magical nature of the horn.
There's no definitive proof that these creatures exist. But we can take a closer look at history to see why people might think that they are real. Ancient travelers and explorers would often encounter animals that they had never seen before. When they returned home, they would tell others about these amazing creatures.
Going by history, unicorns are mythical creatures.
These creatures existed and later disappeared. The Siberian unicorns existed and later were wiped out. They vanished from the face of the Earth about 36,000 years ago due to the reduction in grassland resulting from climate change.