The authors of Mediaeval bestiaries were not merely concerned with providing a description of creatures. No, for them, everything in Creation had a purpose - nothing had been made without an ulterior aim: the edification and instruction of sinful man. So, each creature described is not merely an animal but a living parable, imbued with moral or religious symbolism.

When the great ice-sheets covered the north, life retreated before them, but some species stayed and endured. Whilst man huddled around fires in his caves, mighty beasts roamed the tundra: the Woolly Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros...and the Woolly Wyvern.