For example, there are lions on the coat of arms of Britain or Norway, but there are no lions there.
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I’ve seen a few medieval paintings of animals made by someone who obviously never saw one of those in person. It was basically described to them.
In a lot of countries, it’s BECAUSE those animals don’t live there. A king wages a war and gets an exotic animal as a spoil of war, or gets it gifted as a tribute and then proceeds to put it in his coat of arms…
My city, e.g., has a camel on its coat of arms, because we once stole it from an army that was besieging us at the time.
Have you seen them? They look cool!
Scotland has a Unicorn which last I heard wasn’t native anywhere. When was the last time you saw a dragon or a gryphon? Wales has a dragon. Gryphon is the most widely used “monster” in heraldry.
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