The artists began to depict fantastic animals in medieval miniatures and sculptures for houses and churches. Perhaps, the great number of "earthly creatures" made it possible for the artists to widen their imagination. Artists of ancient Egypt also changed people's heads for beasts', but they did it for religious reasons, although nowadays those figures seem to be funny. In ancient Greece a great comedywright Aristhophanes named some of his comedies after animals ("Wasps", "Frogs").

W.Hogarth exploited common features of people and monkeys in his satiric engravings. Leonardo da Vinci wonderfully combined plants and animals in his drawings. In medieval times "beast satire" was like social protest of the poor. Medieval buffoons dressed up as bears or goats and made people laugh. During Yuletide season common people also put on animal skins and masks. Animal images were used by F. Goya, A. Oberlender, and some others. One of the most famous series is Granville's "Metamorphosis". Especially popular in humorous drawings were such animals as pigs, donkeys, camels, snakes, and magpies.

Modern artists combine reality with fantasy, turn creatures into mechanisms, geographic notions, and abstract symbols. During hard years of revolutions and wars caricaturists drew beasts to mock enemies. In 1932 the caricaturists Y. Ganf and K. Rotov turned the fence around one of Moscow building into a cage where they put imperialist beasts ( a colonialist-tiger, an imperialist-lion, etc.).