Aristotle's History of Animals
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 633 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). Aristotle's History of Animals. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals
- MLAAristotle. Aristotle's History of Animals. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals.
- ChicagoAristotle. Aristotle's History of Animals. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Aristotle's compilation of what was known and what he himself observed about animals: the earliest surviving treatise of zoology.
Context and history
'History' here means inquiry, not a narrative of the past. The book describes parts, habits, reproduction, feeding and behaviour of hundreds of species, and it is the method that makes it remarkable: Aristotle dissects, compares and classifies, and where he has not seen a thing he says so or names his informant. There are errors — many of them, some coming from fishermen and breeders who misinformed him — and there are observations that were not confirmed again until the nineteenth century, such as the reproduction of the octopus or the day-by-day development of the chick embryo. Darwin wrote that his own gods of science were mere schoolboys beside old Aristotle.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
eats only honey and a few other sweet things, while spiders prey upon flies and there are other animals which feed entirely on fish. Some animals hunt for their food, and some make a store, which others do not. There are also animals which make habitations for themselves, and others which do not. The mole, the mouse, the ant, and the bee, make habitations, but many kinds both of insects and quadrupeds make no dwelling. 12. With regard to situation, some are troglodite, as lizards and serpents, others, as the horse and dog, live upon the surface of the earth. Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground, others do not; some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat, others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame, the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed. We may, however, view them in another way, for all the genera that have been tamed are found wild also, as horses, oxen, swine, sheep, goats, and dogs. 13. Some animals utter a loud cry, some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word, in others it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season. Some, as the dove, frequent fields, others, as the hoopoe, live on the mountains; some attach themselves to man, as the pigeon. Some are lascivious, as the partridge and domestic fowl, and others are chaste, as the raven, which rarely cohabits. 14. Again, there are classes of animals furnished with weapons of offence, others with weapons of defence; in the former I include those which are capable of inflicting an injury, or of defending themselves when they are attacked; in the latter those which are provided with some natural protection against injury. 15. Animals also exhibit many differences of disposition.…