In reading The Adventures of Marco Polo, I got to a chapter where the title character spoke of a special kind of lion that helped the Grand Khan hunt, and the lion had white, black, and red stripes all over it. Strange indeed. But actually, it was an animal we learn about in grade school now. A tiger. Hard to believe at one point few people in the European world knew what one was and had to resort to these strange descriptions. He had an interesting description for yaks as well, but not as interesting as this.
In later chapters, this animal is explicitly referred to as a tiger, but its initial description appeared to be a specific and unusual type of lion.
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