Chinese mythology merely fantastic types of the bestiary sort. Sometimes the dragon is considered part of this category, related to it, or the ruler of all the swimming and crawling folk. This may include the giant marine turtle or tortoise Ao, the Bashe snake reputed to swallow elephants, a nine-headed snake monster reminiscent of the hydra known as Xiangliu, and the White Serpent from the novel "Legend of the White Snake". Various birds are found in Chinese mythology, some of them obviously based on real birds, other ones obviously not, and some in-between. The Crane is an example of a real type
Investigations into Germanic Mythology concerning resemblances of Thor and Indra were carried to extremes, therefore receiving "less recognition than they deserved." Others refute individual points of the work. Still others have commented on what they see as fundamental flaws in Rydberg's methodology. While many modern scholars object to any systematization of the mythology including the one imposed by Snorri Sturlusson, believing it artificial, John Lindow and Margaret Clunies Ross have recently supported a chronological systemization of the most important mythic episodes as inherent in the oral tradition underlying Eddic poetry. Rydberg, however, believed that most of the Germanic myths could be fit into such