A fictional hybrid combining the features of a stag and a large bird. Said to cast a human shadow until it kills a person, whereupon it begins casting its own shadow.
The peryton is a fictional hybrid animal combining the physical features of a stag and a bird. The peryton was invented by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings, using the fictional device of a supposedly long-lost medieval manuscript.
Precursors
Some historical versions of the heraldry of King Charles VI of France featured winged stags as heraldic supports,[1] as did some versions of the late medievalbattle standard of the Dukes of Bourbon.[2]
Characteristics
The peryton is said to have the head, neck, forelegs and antlers of a stag, combined with the plumage, wings and hindquarters of a large bird, although some interpretations portray the peryton as a deer in all but coloration and bird's wings.
According to Borges, perytons lived in Atlantis until an earthquake destroyed the civilization and the creatures escaped by flight. A peryton casts the shadow of a human until it kills one during its lifetime, at which time it starts to cast its own shadow. Some descriptions of the peryton allege that a sibyl once prophesied that the perytons would lead to the downfall of Rome.[3]
In science
Radio astronomer Sarah Burke-Spolaor gave the name Peryton to a class of radio signals of terrestrial origin that mimic fast radio bursts – pulses that appear to originate outside our galaxy. The signals Burke-Spolaor observed demonstrated some properties that appeared man-made and some that appeared natural.[4] These perytons were found to be the result of premature opening of a microwave oven door, which released a frequency-swept radio pulse, which mimicked a fast radio burst, as the magnetron turned off.[5]
A version of the peryton appears in the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons and its derivative novel Darkwell, a book in The Moonshae Trilogy where a flock of perytons are among an army of evil monsters summoned by the book's main antagonist.[6]
