Occamy

The Occamy was a dangerous beast.

Description
It was a plumed, two-legged serpentine-bodied creature with wings that reached up to fifteen feet in height. The Occamy was extremely aggressive to anyone who approached it, and lived off of insects, rats, birds, and occasionally monkeys. It was extremely protective of its eggs, which were made of the most pure and soft silver. It was found in the Far East and India.

The Occamy was known to be choranaptyxic, meaning it grew or shrank in order to fit available space.

It was a known rare possible corporeal form of the Patronus Charm.

History
Newton Scamander had several Occamies in his suitcase during his visit to New York in 1926.

At some point during his teaching career, Professor Silvanus Kettleburn brought an Occamy to Hogwarts.

It was once Gilderoy Lockhart's ambition to create a line of haircare products, as he was very proud of his naturally bouncy and wavy hair. He wanted to mass produce the products with his secret ingredient: occamy eggs. As occamies are very territorial, it proved to be too dangerous and too expensive to supply. It is unknown if Lockhart, a long-term resident of St Mungo's, recalls this failed aspiration.

Etymology
The word "occamy" is derived from the name of the English philosopher Occam, who invented the methodological principle "Occam's Razor", which asserts that when evaluating two competing explanations for a situation one should accept the one that requires least assumptions to be made (or, in other words, nothing should be presumed to exist that is not absolutely necessary for explanation).

As such, the naming of this creature as an "occamy" is a joke on the part of J. K. Rowling, since the existence of the occamy itself (and just about every other creature described in ) has no reason to exist and came into being solely for the sake of fleshing out the aforementioned book.

"Occamy" is also phonetically similar to the Japanese word "ookami" (大神), which translates into "great god" or "wolf" (a wordplay used in the video game Okami, which starred a goddess in the form of a wolf).

Behind the scenes

 * It is currently unknown if Occamies, given their snake-like appearance, can speak Parseltongue.
 * While some art depicts them as bipedal bird-like creatures, the film showed them as long and serpentine.
 * The film version of the Occamy resembles Quetzalcoatl, a god of Central American myth who had the appearance of a feathered serpent.

Notes and references
Occamy Occamy Żmijoptak Оккамий