Wait, is it true that the original Cerberus has a snake tail? I never heard of that myself, and I consider myself a mythology buff. I always thought the tail was just the author's personal touch.

I've read different descriptions.

One said each head was specialized in a particular sense, while deprived of the others. Sight, hearing, and smell. And as seen here, each head was that of a different breed of dog.

I thought it was Orthrus that had the snake tail?

Bust+ said:

I thought it was Orthrus that had the snake tail?

Nope. The version of Cerberus we've gotten in the West was simplified: In the earliest description of Cerberus, Hesiod's Theogony (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Cerberus has fifty heads, while Pindar (c. 522 – c. 443 BC) gave him one hundred heads.[5] However, later writers almost universally give Cerberus three heads.

Latin poet Horace's Cerberus however, has a single dog head, and one hundred snake heads. Perhaps trying to reconcile these competing traditions, Apollodorus's Cerberus has three dog heads and the heads of "all sorts of snakes" along his back, while the Byzantine poet John Tzetzes (who probably based his account on Apollodorus) gives Cerberus fifty heads, three of which were dog heads, the rest being the "heads of other beasts of all sorts". But most 'old' description of Cerberus has one similarity: it has snake tail.

Tl;Dr phone game shenanigans.

Oral traditions be whack, yo.

In some stuff I’ve seen, Cerberus is supposed to have fur made of snakes, so imagine it’s like a 3 headed mop-dog but each dreadlock thing is a snake

someguyted said:

In some stuff I’ve seen, Cerberus is supposed to have fur made of snakes, so imagine it’s like a 3 headed mop-dog but each dreadlock thing is a snake

That's Apollodorus' version.