Occamy

The Occamy is a plumed, two-legged serpentine-bodied creature with wings that may reach up to fifteen feet in height. The Occamy is extremely aggressive to anyone who approaches it, and lives off of rats, birds, and occasionally monkeys. It is extremely protective of its eggs, which are made of the most pure and soft silver. It is found in the Far East and India.

The Occamy is known to be choranaptyxic, meaning it grows or shrinks in order to fit available space.

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.

It is a known corporeal form of the Patronus Charm.

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".

Notes and references
Occamy Occamy Żmijoptak