Linnaeus formally classified human monsters as a biological species.

Evidence

In addition to the example of the carousel painting, other Muslim monsters continued to be generated during the Enlightenment. Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish Enlightenment scientist, classified a species of beings— Homo monstrous—monsters that were delineated from human beings. Homo monstrous was then divided into three types of monsters— Homo troglodytes, Homo caudatus, and Homo marinus. Linnaeus influenced later generations of scientists, including those who traveled on voyages of exploration. Many monsters were purportedly observed on these voyages, including some in regions of the globe that Europeans only “discovered” in the fifteenth century and after. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 346

Categorization

• XREF: Linnaean Homo monstrous gives the monster myth scientific authority — connects to the reader’s inquiry about how theology, tales, and art converged, here extending into early science; a taxonomy of monsters legitimized by the father of modern biology.
• QUESTION: Which specific bodies were classified under troglodytes/caudatus/marinus, and did Linnaeus’s later revisions retract or keep these categories? Worth chasing whether the Muslim monster was explicitly named or only implied in the species descriptions.