Fantastic Beasts & How We Could Encounter Them (Spoilers Extended)
One little thing that I absolutely love about the series are the extinct megafauna and cryptids that exist. You can see most of them on the wiki in the Bestiary
While we have already encountered numerous of these creatures such as dragons, direwolves and shadowcats, in this post I wanted to look into any of these that we have yet to encounter that we could encounter in the main series (ex: I doubt anyone heads to Sothoryos).
List of Megafauna (extinct and/or not a 1:1 comparison to a real world animal) and cryptids we could encounter in the main series
Note: I am intentionally avoiding sentients like Deep Ones, Squishers, etc. as well other types of snarks and grumpkins. Basically outside of the ice spiders, creatures confirmed to exist in world.
Giant Ice Spiders
There are numerous mentions of ice spiders (as big as hounds) being ridden by the Others.
Yet there are other tales—harder to credit and yet more central to the old histories—about creatures known as the Others. According to these tales, they came from the frozen Land of Always Winter, bringing the cold and darkness with them as they sought to extinguish all light and warmth.The tales go on to say they rode monstrous ice spiders and the horses of the dead, resurrected to serve them, just as they resurrected dead men to fight on their behalf. -TWOIAF, Ancient History: The Long Night
Kraken(s)
Its very likely (but not guaranteed) that this is what Euron is currently summoning outside Oldtown. Even if it doesn't work, there have been increased sightings:
"And krakens off the Broken Arm, pulling under crippled galleys," said Valena. "The blood draws them to the surface, our maester claims. There are bodies in the water. -TWOW, Arianne I
Unicorns
Davos is currently headed to Skagos to get Rickon.
Skagos is one of the few places left in the world that is home to unicorns, even though I am cheating as we kind of saw one already through Jon's dream:
Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself. -ADWD, Jon I
Cave Lion/Westeros Lion
According to Leaf they are all gone:
"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us." -ADWD, Bran III
But GRRM did have this to say:
We have never had a POV near Casterly Rock. Can you tell me more about the lions of Westeros? Are any still around?
GRRM: A few survive in the outlying hills. For the most part, they have been hunted down. In antiquity, they actually made dens in the rock itself". -SSM, US Signing Tour SF: 15 November 2005
But they seem to be alive at least in captivity:
Cersei paced her cell, restless as the caged lions that had lived in the bowels of Casterly Rock when she was a girl, a legacy of her grandfather's time. She and Jaime used to dare each other to climb into their cage, and once she worked up enough courage to slip her hand between two bars and touch one of the great tawny beasts. She was always bolder than her brother. The lion had turned his head to stare at her with huge golden eyes. Then he licked her fingers. His tongue was as rough as a rasp, but even so she would not pull her hand back, not until Jaime took her by the shoulders and yanked her away from the cage. -ADWD, Cersei II
So its possible we could see them when we finally get to see Casterly Rock. The Prince of Pentos also has some as well in his menagerie and we have an extremely small chance to see them seeing that Pentos is a plotpoint (Illyrio/Tattered Prince):
That seemed to amuse the lord of cheese no end. He slapped a meaty thigh and said, "You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. I can take you to a real lion, my little friend. The prince keeps a pride in his menagerie. Would you like to share a cage with them?" -ADWD, Tyrion I
Hrakkar
I am cheating again here as we at least see Drogo go off to hunt it and return with the pelt for Dany. That said with Dany's return to the Dothraki sea, there exists the potential for her to see a "white lion".
The Sealord's Menegerie
This would require Arya visiting/having a mission that requires her to visit it. But we know that he has the following creatures:
"Hear me. The ships of Braavos sail as far as the winds blow, to lands strange and wonderful, and when they return their captains fetch queer animals to the Sealord's menagerie. Such animals as you have never seen, striped horses, great spotted things with necks as long as stilts, hairy mouse-pigs as big as cows, stinging manticores, tigers that carry their cubs in a pouch, terrible walking lizards with scythes for claws. Syrio Forel has seen these things. -AGOT, Arya IV
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Striped Horses (It is ambiguous if this is about zorses (which we have seen via the Brave Companions) or actual zebralike creatures (which we have not)
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Great Spotted Things with Necks as Long as Stilts (giraffe)
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Hairy Mouse-Pigs as Big as Cows (Capybara/Tapir)
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Stinging Manticores (we've already seen with the Sorrowful Man assassination attempt)
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Tigers that carry their Cubs in a Pouch (Thylacine aka Tasmanian Tiger)
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Terrible Walking Lizards with scythes for claws (GRRM is a Michael Crichton/Jurassic Park fan and likely based these on their version of "velociraptor" which should technically be Deinonychus or Utahraptor.) Here is another quote about them:
Tattooed lizards stalk the jungles, running down their prey and ripping them apart with the long curved claws on their powerful hind legs. -TWOIAF, The Free Cities and Beyond: Sothoryos
Lizard-Lion
Infest the Neck (I know Mycah shows Arya one, but the reader doesn't get much info). As crocodiles exist in Sothoryos, the Summer Islands, etc. I don't think it is suppose to be exactly the same.
In his novel Tuf Voyaging he described a lizard lion as:
a reptile with a long, whiplike tail and a long snout similar to an alligator's.
So while it is unknown if Westerosi lizard lions are exactly the same, I thought it was worth mentioning.
Another possible lizard lion worth mentioning:
They had been lucky as well as brave. It had been a moon's turn since the last good rain, and the sewers were only thigh-high. The oilcloth they'd wrapped around their torches kept them dry, so they had light. A few of the freedmen were frightened of the huge rats until Strong Belwas caught one and bit it in two. One man was killed by a great pale lizard that reared up out of the dark water to drag him off by the leg, but when next ripples were spied Ser Jorah butchered the beast with his blade. They took some wrong turnings, but once they found the surface Strong Belwas led them to the nearest fighting pit, where they surprised a few guards and struck the chains off the slaves. Within an hour, half the fighting slaves in Meereen had risen. -ASOS, Daenerys VI
As the above takes place in the Meereen sewers, its possible this is just an allusion to the 1980's fears of people flushing pet alligators/crocodiles down the toilet and them growing to monstrous sizes down there.
Firewyrms
If anyone happens to return to Valyria they could spot a Firewyrm.
Or the small possibility that this is what Euron is summoning: Wyrms await you Aeron
Ice Dragon/Sea Dragon
Obviously two different creatures, but I felt necessary to mention them due to the fact that the possibility remains that we could see either due to Euron's Summoning as well as a couple potential northern events that could be see as "ice dragons".
Im sure I missed a few good ones. I left a few off due to spacing that would require a return through the Forest of Qohor (Little Valyrians), and other locations I didn't see a way to get back to in the main story.
If you enjoy looking at the fauna in the ASOIAF world, I highly recommend you check out the aforementioned bestiary on the wiki.
Here are a few other posts that involve animals if you enjoyed this one:
The Stark Direwolves vs. Ramsay's Hounds
Creature vs. Creature Encounters
Feel free to mention your own that you think could be encountered! Obviously this list would be much longer if we included creatures that we likely won't encounter the rest of the way. For instance... King Kong
In the forests south of Yeen, there are said to be apes that dwarf the largest giants, so powerful they can slay elephants with a single blow. -TWOIAF, Beyond The Free Cities: Sothoryos
TLDR: A list of some of the cryptids/extinct megafauna that we could encounter in the last few books
Posted Nov 13, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC