It has the reputed ability to kill people by either looking at them—"the death-darting eye of Cockatrice"[5]—touching them, or sometimes breathing on them.
It was repeated in the late-medieval bestiaries that the weasel is the only animal that is immune to the glance of a cockatrice.[citation needed] It was also thought that a cockatrice would die instantly upon hearing a rooster crow,[6] and according to legend, having a cockatrice look at itself in a mirror is one of the few sure-fire ways to kill i