Ever dreamed of having a pig with angel wings, chicken feet and the tail of a cock? Or even better, a three-headed giraffe with shark faces, anfibious extremities and mind-blowing colors?

The only limit is your imagination with Mexican Alebrije sculpture. The skeletons of these fantastic animals are usually made of wire (or wood when the alebrije is too big for wire) and papier mache. But there are also wood-carved alebrijes, where oaxacan towns San Martín Tilcajete and La Unión Tejalapan stand out.

An intricate mixture of prehispanic motifs and dream-like, colorful pattern combinations usually make these hybrids shiny and inspire vivacity and freshness. The way vivid colors are used in Mexican handcraft arts is probably the most caracteristic feature they have.

And what’s the story behind them?

Well, what happens with history is that you can trace origins as back in time as you want (and of course, as back in time as the theme allows you to). If we think about the origins of hybrid animals, we can look at prehistory: some cave paintings represent humans with animal features and also other hybrids. The interpretations for these can vary a lot since we have no codex to decipher what cave paintings represent. They are present in animal worship, totemism… and almost every mythology mentions these fantastic creatures, since they have been represented for centuries in almost every culture.

But let’s concentrate a bit on the alebrije itself. The most popular version was that Pedro Linares, a cartonero (a paper maché craftsman) from Mexico City, invented them after a revealing hallucination. In 1936, young Pedro was in the midst of a fever which threatened his life. He was poor as also was the city’s healthcare system, and his sisters assisted him with traditional herbal treatments. Linares’ life expectancy was below zero, and, according to some versions of the story, he was taken to his mortuory wake.

While in this tricky feverish state, he found himself on a beautiful forest, which he started to roam and discover. But soon appeared enormous, strange figures, full of color and different animals’ bodyparts. Apparently, they too roamed the forest; but you know, its not the same when a 15 ft tall chimera walks around. Frightened, Linares started hiding from these wild creatures, whose only words were the (at the time) gibberish words “Alebrije”, which they spoke with their booming voices.