What do you get when you cross an ouroboros with a Möbius strip? M.C. Escher knew: The dreaded Mouroboröbius!

Actually, it’s just Escher’s four-block wood engraving print Möbius Band I, circa 1961, which gives the appearance of being both a double and a triple ouroboros/Möbius strip combo: Two loops, two strips; three creatures, three twists. (It is also a left-handed trefoil knot.) In my copy of Escher’s The Graphic Work, the notes to this piece (which notes I believe are written by Escher himself) mention that the three creatures depicted are in fact supposed to be … fish? (The dreaded ichthyoboros?)

An endless band has been cut through, down its whole length. The two sections have been drawn apart from each other a little, so that a clear space divides them all the way round. Thus the band ought to fall apart into two unattached rings, and yet apparently it consists of one single strip, made up of three fish, each biting the tail of the one in front. They go round twice before regaining their point of departure.

Escher’s other ouroboros: Dragon, circa 1952.