Creatures

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic hosts an array of mythological and fantasy creatures. Some, like dragons and Diamond Dogs, have speaking roles and display sentience when interacting with the protagonists. Others behave more like animals.

Cerberus
Cerberus is a giant three-headed dog that appears in the episode It's About Time, interrupting Twilight's attempts to "disaster-proof" Equestria. He is a black bulldog, with red pupils in his eyes and spiked collars on each neck. The three heads can display different expressions to each other; when Twilight Sparkle first calls out to him, the heads glance at each other, and they later look up at different times when she calls out again.

According to Twilight Sparkle, he is responsible for guarding the gates of Tartarus and keeping the evil creatures within from escaping. Twilight explains to Spike that with Cerberus away from Tartarus, the "ancient evil creatures" imprisoned there could escape and destroy Equestria.

Cerberus scares many of the Ponyville residents with its roars and aggressive demeanor. Twilight tries to fight him with magic, but Fluttershy intervenes and is able to calm Cerberus. Twilight then uses a ball to lure him away from Ponyville and back home to Tartarus. The next day, Spike receives a missing dog flyer from Princess Celestia, who appears to be unaware that Cerberus has returned to Tartarus.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Cerberus, or Kerberos, was a three-headed dog-like beast with a serpent's tail and was responsible for guarding the gates of Hades and keeping spirits from leaving. Heracles was sent to capture Cerberus as one of his twelve labors.

Cockatrice
A cockatrice is featured in the episode Stare Master. Fluttershy explains to the Cutie Mark Crusaders that a cockatrice "has the head of a chicken and the body of a snake", and that they are fearsome, dangerous creatures. They have the ability to turn creatures into stone with their gaze. When Fluttershy ventures into the forest, she finds Twilight Sparkle turned to stone due to Twilight meeting the cockatrice. She later confronts the cockatrice, and while in the process of being turned into stone herself, she stares it down and tells it to restore Twilight and her missing chicken, who has also been petrified, to normal.

Cockatrices are mentioned in legend from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Diamond Dog
Diamond Dogs are a race of sentient dogs and the antagonists in the episode A Dog and Pony Show, where they kidnap Rarity and force her to find gems for them in their underground mine.

Dragon
Dragons play a role as antagonists in the episodes Dragonshy and Owl's Well That Ends Well, and Spike, one of the main characters, is a dragon as well.

Hydra
The hydra appears in Feeling Pinkie Keen, residing in Froggy Bottom Bog.

The hydra has four heads on long snake-like necks and a large, orange, dragon-like body, with only two legs and no wings or arms. The ponies note a smelly gas that envelops it as it rises from the bog. Before chasing the ponies, it gives a threatening roar and licks its lips. The heads sometimes display different expressions and even laugh at each others' misfortunes. Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Spike run away from the hydra, and one of them blows a raspberry at the ponies after they successfully escape.

In classical mythology, the Hydra, meaning "water serpent", was defeated by Heracles (Hercules) during his labors. It was so poisonous that even its breath and tracks were deadly, and if someone was lucky enough to cut off a head, it grew two more in its place.

Manticore
A manticore is a creature with the body of a lion, a scorpion's tail, and a pair of wings.

The ponies encounter the manticore in Friendship is Magic, part 2, enraged by Night Mare Moon as an obstacle for Twilight Sparkle and her friends in their journey to find the Elements of Harmony. Similar to Aesop's fable of The Lion and The Mouse, it is calmed when Fluttershy shows it kindness and removes a thorn from its paw.

In Persian mythology, the manticore is a creature with a red lion's body, a human-like face, a mouth with shark-like rows of sharp teeth, and a voice like a trumpet. Additional features such as a scorpion-like tail, wings, and the ability to launch poisonous spines at its enemies depend on the story. It is considered a man-eater, often leaving no remains, not even bones or clothing.

Parasprite
Parasprites are small, round flying creatures which appear in the episode Swarm of the Century. They are depicted as having a ravenous appetite and multiplying very quickly, and soon their presence in Ponyville develops into an infestation.

Phoenix
A Phoenix is a bird whose feathers are entirely made of fire. When they age, they loose all their feathers before turning to ash, in which then they get reborn, as shown in A Bird in the Hoof. In Dragon Quest, it is shown that a Phoenix can actually be a couple and lay eggs which would hatch into baby Phoenixes. They appear to be capable of engulfing themselves in flames and shining brightly to scare away enemies. Both Princess Celestia and Spike have Phoenixes as pets, such as Philomeena and Peewee.

In their first appearance in A Bird in the Hoof, Fluttershy tried to heal Celestia's elderly pet phoenix Philomeena with little success, luckily in the end she was reborn and fully healed. In their second appearance in Dragon Quest, Spike was convinced by a group of teenage dragons to help in raiding a Phoenix nest. The Phoenixes and their hatchlings managed to escape, but sadly an egg was left behind which Spike decided to adopt and he later named the hatchling Peewee.

Quarray eel
Quarray eels are large burgundy-colored creatures that live in holes in the side of Ghastly Gorge and are seen in the episode May the Best Pet Win!. Their name is a play on "moray eels" and "quarry". When Rainbow Dash races through the gorge in this episode, she tells her prospective pets that the eels become agitated when anyone gets too close to their nests. The eels pop their heads out to try and eat the contestants as they pass by.

After Rainbow Dash dodges all of the eels with relative ease, the other animals try to make it through: the bat is almost swallowed by one of the eels, but it manages to escape out of the creature's nostril; the eagle almost has its head bitten off by another eel; the owl uses its wings to keep a third eel from biting down and swallowing it; and the falcon gets its tail feathers bitten by a fourth eel, but it manages to escape the eel's grip.

Sea serpent
The sea serpent featured in Friendship is Magic, part 2 has a long serpentine body, reminiscent of an Asian dragon, with purple scales, and orange hair, eyebrows, and mustache. He is one of the obstacles that the ponies face in their quest for the Elements of Harmony. Night Mare Moon cuts off half of his mustache, sending him into a tantrum that renders the river impassable. Rarity soothes his tantrum by sacrificing her tail to make up the rest of his cut mustache through her unicorn magic. In thanks, the serpent offers his body as a bridge across the river. Fluttershy, however, who is afraid of large dragons in a later episode, shows no fear of the serpent.

Timberwolf
Timberwolves are a vicious-looking species of wolves made completely out of wood. They reside in the Everfree Forest and first appear in the episode Family Appreciation Day. They were first seen in Granny Smith's flashback of her youth in which after she went to collect food for her family in the Everfree Forest she came upon a Zap Apple Tree and immediately went to pick its fruit. However, she had also stepped upon the territory of the vicious Timberwolves, who proceeded to relentlessly chase after her.

After much running she managed to make it back to her home where she used the sound of some of her pots and pans to scare off the Timberwolves. Earlier in the episode the howls of the Timberwolves can still be heard showing that they are still around in the present day (their howls also serve as the first sign of the yearly Zap Apple Tree harvest).

Their name is a play on the actual breed of wolf known as a Gray Wolf which is also known as a Timber Wolf.

Ursa
Ursas are gigantic magical bears with fur that looks like the night sky, who appear in Boast Busters. The ursa minor is nearly as big as adult dragons, and the ursa major is many times larger still. At the start of the episode, Trixie boasts that she defeated an ursa major that was attacking Hoofington. Snips and Snails go into the Everfree Forest with the intention to find an ursa and lead it back to Ponyville, hoping to see Trixie defeat it. They find one and get chased by it into Ponyville, where Trixie is forced to admit she did not vanquish an ursa and cannot defeat this one. The ursa turns out to be an ursa minor, which Twilight soon returns to its mother, an ursa major, displaying her very powerful unicorn magic.

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. The ursas in the show have unusually long tails for bears, much like their constellation namesakes.

Windigo
The Windigoes are "winter spirits that feed off fighting and hatred; the more hate the spirit feels, the colder things become", according to the character Twilight Sparkle plays in the Hearth's Warming Eve play, Clover the Clever. The three windigoes feature three times throughout the episode Hearth's Warming Eve: at the conclusion of the grand summit, after the pony leaders' snowball fight, and at the cave that the ponies took as shelter.

The Windigoes look like ghostly and slightly translucent horses. In their first appearance the three windigoes only look down onto the grand summit from a passage in the clouds with glowing blue eyes, but in their second and third appearances they wail and fly in a circle of clouds. They are defeated by "the fire of friendship", a pink flame that takes the shape of a heart which was created in the play when Clover, Smart Cookie, and Pansy become friends. However, it is implied that they, or other members of their race, are still around in modern Equestria because one of their distinctive howls is heard through an open window when Rainbow Dash and Applejack argue about who has the responsibility of closing it.

In the mythology of the Algonquian peoples, the Wendigo is a malevolent, cannibalistic supernatural being strongly associated with the winter, the North, and coldness, as well as with famine and starvation.

Miscellaneous

 * Discord is a dragonequus, a powerful magical being consisting of parts from many different creatures.
 * Gilda, a griffon, appears in Griffon the Brush Off.
 * Iron Will, a minotaur, appears in Putting Your Hoof Down.

Gallery

 * Creatures image gallery