ポーロは、ロック鳥が「南の地域から」マダガスカルに飛来し、大ハーンが使者を送って羽(ラフィアの葉のようだ)を持って戻ってきたと述べた<ref name="ley196608">Ley , Willy , August 1966 , Scherazade's Island , For Your Information , https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v24n06_1966-08#page/n45/mode/2up , Galaxy Science Fiction , pages45–55</ref>。ポーロは、この鳥を[[グリフィン]]と明確に区別している。
『アラビアンナイト』では、シンドバッドの2回目の航海の途中、熱帯の島にロック鳥が出現する。『アラビアンナイト』では、シンドバッドの2回目の航海の途中、熱帯の島にロック鳥が出現する。ポーロの記述から、この島がマダガスカル島であることがわかり、他の巨大鳥の話も出てくるようになった<ref>ley196608</ref>。
Because of Polo's account, others identified the island as Madagascar, which became the location for stories about other giant birds.{{r|ley196608}} Doubtless, it was Polo's description that inspired [[Antonio Pigafetta]], one of [[Ferdinand Magellan]]'s companions, who wrote or had ghost-written an embroidered account of the circumglobal voyage: in Pigafetta's account<ref>Or the Italian version in [[Giovanni Battista Ramusio|Ramusio's]] ''Delle navigationi et viaggi'', mentioned in [[Rudolf Wittkower]], "'Roc': An Eastern Prodigy in a Dutch Engraving" ''Journal of the Warburg Institute'' '''1'''.3 (January 1938:255–257) p 255</ref> the home grounds of the roc were the seas of [[China]]. Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as [[Stradanus]] {{circa}} 1590<ref>An engraving after Stradanus is reproduced in Wittkower 1938:fig 33c.</ref> or [[Theodor de Bry]] in 1594 who showed an elephant being carried off in the roc's talons,<ref>De Bry's engraving is reproduced in Attenborough (1961: 35)</ref> or showed the roc destroying entire ships in revenge for destruction of its giant egg, as recounted in the fifth voyage of [[Sinbad the Sailor#The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor|Sinbad the Sailor]]. [[Ulisse Aldrovandi]]'s ''Ornithologia'' (1599) included a woodcut of a roc with a somewhat pig-like elephant in its talons,<ref>Illustrated in Wittkower 1938:33, fig. b.</ref> but in the rational world of the 17th century, the roc was regarded more critically.
==Rationalized accounts==