Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as Stradanus c. 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 the home grounds of the roc were the seas of China. Because of Polo's account, others identified the island as Madagascar, which became the location for stories about other giant birds. In The Arabian Nights the roc appears on a tropical island during Sinbad's second voyage. He explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin. Polo claimed that the roc flew to Madagascar "from the southern regions", and that the Great Khan sent messengers to the island who returned with a feather (likely a Raphia frond). And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure. It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. In the 13th century, Marco Polo (as quoted in Attenborough (1961: 32)) stated
Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela reported a story reminiscent of the roc in which shipwrecked sailors escaped from a desert island by wrapping themselves in ox-hides and letting griffins carry them off as if they were cattle. 1690 painting by Franz Rösel von Rosenhof showing two roc-like birds carrying a deer and an elephant a third grasps a lion.