SOURCES: The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells (1901)

DESCRIPTION: “...First of all was its enormous size: the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic flabby body lay alongthe ground and that its skin was of corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile of at least the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering, omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again, we had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all his leathery skin...” (The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells)

NOTES: The Moon-Calf has a gigantic body since the selenites have bred it to produce alrge amounts of food, much as our own cattle is large and fatter than a natural animal.

HISTORY: The Moon-Calf is the Selenite's grazing animal. The moon explorers come upon them without realizing what they are and are greatly frightened. In the 1963 film Ray Harryhausen makes them giant caterpillars which isn't really correct.