<P> It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion . And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure . </P> <P> Polo claimed that the roc flew to Madagascar "from the southern regions", and that the Great Khan sent messengers to the island who returned with a feather (likely a Raphia frond). He explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin . </P> <P> In The Arabian Nights the roc appears on a tropical island during Sinbad's second voyage . Because of Polo's account, others identified the island as Madagascar, which became the location for stories about other giant birds . Doubtless, it was Polo's description that inspired Antonio Pigafetta, one of Ferdinand Magellan's companions, who wrote or had ghost - written an embroidered account of the circumglobal voyage: in Pigafetta's account the home grounds of the roc were the seas of China . Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as Johannes Stradanus ca 1590 or Theodor de Bry in 1594 who showed an elephant being carried off in the roc's talons, or showed the roc destroying entire ships in revenge for destruction of its giant egg, as recounted in the fifth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor . Ulisse Aldrovandi's Ornithologia (1599) included a woodcut of a roc with a somewhat pig - like elephant in its talons, but in the rational world of the 17th century, the roc was regarded more critically . </P> <P> The scientific culture of the 19th century introduced some "scientific" rationalizations for the myth's origins, by suggesting that the origin of the myth of the roc may lie in embellishments of the often - witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb . In 1863, Bianconi suggested the roc was a raptor (Hawkins and Goodman, 2003: 1031). Recently a giant subfossil eagle, the Malagasy crowned eagle, identified from Madagascar was actually implicated as a top bird predator of the island, whose megafauna once included giant lemurs and pygmy hippopotamuses . </P>

A mythical bird of prey that hunted elephants