The cockatrice is half rooster, half dragon. It's produced from a rooster's egg (yes, a rooster not a chicken!) that has been nurtured by a toad. The cockatrice is essentially a variation of the Basilisk myth with similar qualities. It's gaze kills or turns things to stone, weasels are the only living things that can survive its staring contests, etc.
Where do creatures like this come from? Many monsters originated from medieval bestiaries. These books were something between natural history encyclopedias and Sunday School lessons. Each animal was a sort of Christian spiritual symbol. Where there were gaps in biblical or biological knowledge, natural creatures were embellished to illustrate the various moral principles. Often, creatures were simply made up, derived from mistranslation or superstition. In fact, the cockatrice cameoed multiple times in the original King James Bible as a rendering for the Hebrew word for cobra or viper.
And that's where we get something as bizarre as the chicken-snake.
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