Cockatrice

Cockatrice


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A cockatrice is a legendary creature about the size and shape of a dragon or wyvern, but in appearance resembling a giant rooster, with some lizard-like characteristics. It was supposed to be born from an egg laid by a cock and incubated by a toad or serpent. A female cockatrice is, by analogy, sometimes termed a chickatrice.
Its reputed magical abilities include turning people to stone by either looking at them, touching them, or sometimes breathing on them, like a dragon breathing fire. The cockatrice is very similar (if not identical) to another legendary creature, the basilisk. Its name may come from a folk etymology for crocodile.
Like the head of Medusa, the cockatrice's powers of petrification are still effective after death.
A cockatrice overdoor at Belvedere Castle in New York's Central Park


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Cockatrice in modern fiction

• In Dungeons & Dragons, there is a cockatrice (classified as a Magical Beast) in the Monster Manual.
  
• There is also a Magic: The Gathering cockatrice card, similar to the basilisk.
  
• In the computer role-playing game Final Fantasy IV, the cockatrice (or "cocatrice") is a summoned monster with the power to turn an enemy monster into stone.
  
• As a creature in the roguelike game NetHack, its petrification capabilities make it a particularly fearsome monster as well as a formidable weapon once slain (assuming the wielder has some protection against the effects).