The notion of a creator deity in animal or plant form is comparatively rare. There are stories of animals, birds, or insects creating the world and of creators with animal attributes or animal companions, but these are isolated traditions. Even in the widespread motif of the birth of the world from a cosmic egg there is rarely the notion of a bird laying or incubating the egg (the most notable exception is the world egg laid by a beautiful bird in the beginning of the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland). There are, however, a number of cosmogonic (origin of ...(100 of 22834 words)