This chapter examines the depiction of taxidermy in 17th-century Flemish painting using three examples: a painting of sea monsters by Hans Savery (1576/78–1639), a painting with devils by David Teniers (1610–1690), and a painting with snakes and dragons by Jan van Kessel (1626–1679). What all these paintings have in common is that the creatures depicted do not actually exist. The artists used dried specimens as models that had been manipulated in order to look more dangerous. Some such specimens from the 17th and 18th centuries have survived and serve as a comparison. The aesthetics of these objects can be described as grotesque. The painters used the ambivalent effect of the grotesque – half frightening, half amusing – to depict threats: Savery’s painting seems to allude to a shipwreck, Teniers’s is about witches, and van Kessel’s to the danger of an Ottoman invasion of Europe. However, the artists seem to have played with the viewers’ knowledge of natural history: Teniers’ work is a painted play on words as he paints a ‚sea-devil‘ in a satanic scene, and Jan van Kessel used a specimen as a model that had long been exposed as a fake by authors such as Ulysse Aldrovandi.