In his encyclopedic work Natural History, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder documented storms of frogs and fish falling from the sky, among other animal rains. Writing in the first century AD, Pliny compiled these reports from across the Roman world, treating them as remarkable natural occurrences rather than purely supernatural events. His compilation remains one of the earliest systematic records of animal precipitation.

Pliny's Natural History became a foundational source for medieval and Renaissance bestiaries and natural histories. Poets and writers from Dante to Shakespeare drew on Pliny's catalog of marvels, and animal rain became a recurring motif in poetry about divine intervention, natural chaos, and the uncanny, influencing works from Exodus to modern surrealist verse.