JKP, looking at the image you provided, I'm tempted to just say it uses a visual metaphor to liken thunder to a group of monsters, and leave it at that. The artistic traditions of the Classical World (among many, many other places) have a long tradition of
ad hoc combinations of hideous, exotic, and powerful features from throughout the animal kingdom, on a single animal, as a way of implying "the most terrifying beast (or by metaphor, phenomenon) one could ever imagine!". Sure, there were some forms that became set over time and became tropes in their own right, like the chimera, the gryphon, the gargoyle, and the garuda. But I always got the sense that no matter how populated the Western imagination has become with very specific mythical beasts, there has always been, and still is, a vibrant tradition of artists and storytellers trying to top each other by coming up with newer and more dreadful combinations of features. I'm pretty sure this tradition is what Mark Twain was satirizing in *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* with the You are not allowed to view links.
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Source: I was raised on children's fables and mythology from around the world, instead of TV.