These little dragons are dried rays, cut and folded by hand

A Jenny Haniver is a dried ray or skate reshaped by hand until it looks like a small dragon or a demon. They go back to the sixteenth century, when sailors and collectors bought them as curiosities. The name may come from jeune d'Anvers, "youth of Antwerp" which British sailors turned into a woman's name.

The most common claim was that a Jenny Haniver was a basilisk. A basilisk killed anyone who looked at it, so nobody could say what one actually looked like, which made the fakes easy to pass off. People were still widely afraid of basilisks in the sixteenth century.

The earliest known picture of one appears in Konrad Gesner's Historia Animalium in 1558. Even then, Gesner warned his readers that these were just mutilated rays, not tiny dragons.

In Veracruz, Mexico, curanderos treat Jenny Hanivers as objects with magical powers and use them in their rituals. Japan had a similar tradition of faked merfolk, called ningyo, kept in temples.

Previously:
• This freaky mermaid-monkey residing in a Japanese temple may not be what it seems
• Fiji Mermaids, shrunken heads, and other essentials from The Gemini Company