History of Animals

Summary

The History of Animals (Greek Historia peri ta zoa, often translated 'Inquiry into Animals') is the largest of Aristotle's biological works and the foundation of zoology as a discipline. The Greek word historia means inquiry or a collected account of facts, not history in the sense of a narrative of the past, and Aristotle's aim here is to record the differences among animals in their parts, their ways of life, their activities and their characters, so that their causes can be explained in companion treatises such as Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals. More than five hundred kinds of animals appear, from sponges, sea anemones and cuttlefish to the elephant, the camel and the human being, with special attention to the fish and shellfish of the Aegean. Book I sets out the ways animals differ (in habitat, food, mode of life and temperament) and then, because a man is best known to us, describes the human body part by part as a standard of comparison. Book II surveys the external and internal parts of blooded animals, with notes on the ape, the elephant and the chameleon. Book III treats the generative organs, quotes the physicians Syennesis of Cyprus, Diogenes of Apollonia and Polybus on the course of the blood vessels before giving Aristotle's own account, and describes bone, sinew, fat, blood and milk. Book IV turns to the bloodless animals (cephalopods, crustaceans, shellfish and insects) and to senses, voice and sleep, observing that horses, dogs and other quadrupeds appear to dream. Books V and VI describe reproduction in insects, fish, birds and mammals, including the day-by-day development of the chick in the egg, in which the heart first appears as a pulsing red spot. Book VII, with frank detail, covers human conception, pregnancy, childbirth and infancy. Books VIII and IX, in Cresswell's order, describe how animals feed, migrate, hibernate and fall ill, their friendships and enmities, and their apparent traces of character and intelligence, ending with bees. Book X, on human sterility, is generally regarded as not by Aristotle. The work mixes Aristotle's own observation and dissection with reports from fishermen, hunters, beekeepers and earlier writers, and he often marks which reports he doubts. Some descriptions long dismissed as fables were confirmed in the nineteenth century, notably his account of the smooth dogfish nourishing its young through a placenta-like attachment and the specialised mating arm of the male octopus. Other claims, such as that men have more teeth than women and that the back of the skull is empty, are plain errors. The book rewards students who want to see how close attention to living things begins, and it invites them to receive creatures as part of an ordered, intelligible world worth knowing.

Top Lessons

• Inquiry begins with collecting differences

  Historia means an organised gathering of facts. Aristotle insists on first establishing what is the case about animals, their parts and habits, before explaining why, and he keeps that task separate from his causal treatises. Students learn that careful description is not inferior to theory but its necessary foundation.

• Starting from the creature we know best

  In Book I Aristotle begins with the human body because, as with a familiar currency, the best known serves as the measure for the rest. Yet he places human beings within the animal kingdom while singling them out as the only animals capable of deliberation and recollection. The book thus affirms both our kinship with other creatures and our distinctness from them.

• Watching the chick's heart begin

  Book VI, Ch. III describes, from opened eggs, the heart appearing on about the third day as a red spot that palpitates as if alive, then the vessels, eyes and body taking shape. The passage shows patient, repeated observation of development, and it grounded Aristotle's conviction that the heart is the first part to live. Harvey would return to the same egg two thousand years later.

• Honest records include honest mistakes

  Some of Aristotle's reports long mocked as fables, such as the placental dogfish and the octopus's mating arm, were vindicated, while other confident claims, such as men having more teeth than women, were simply wrong. Reading both kinds side by side teaches that accuracy depends on checking, and that a great observer still needs correction.

• Traces of character in animals

  Book VIII opens by noting that animals show traces of gentleness or ferocity, courage or cowardice, and that nature passes by small steps from lifeless things to plants and animals. Aristotle sees continuity without erasing the difference reason makes. The passage invites careful thought about how creatures resemble us and how they do not.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medical relevance was raised from none to medium because the book itself contains extended human anatomy, quotations from early physicians on the blood vessels, a book on human conception, pregnancy, childbirth and infancy, observations on sleep and dreaming, and descriptions of animal diseases including canine lytta (usually identified with rabies). Aristotle had not dissected human bodies, and much of his human anatomy is inferred from animals or reports; his errors (an empty occiput, more teeth in men) are part of the historical record. Identifications of ancient diseases with modern ones are interpretive.

• Book I, Ch. VI-XVII

  Systematic description of the human body, head to foot and then internal organs, used as the standard for comparing other animals; includes the claim that the occiput is empty.

• Book III, Ch. II-V

  Quotations from Syennesis of Cyprus, Diogenes of Apollonia and Polybus on the course of the veins, followed by Aristotle's own account centred on the heart and his description of sinews.

• Book IV, Ch. X

  Sleep and dreaming in animals; the claim that infants do not dream until about four or five, and that dreaming beginning late in life may precede illness or death.

• Book VII, Ch. II-XI

  Menstruation, signs of conception, pregnancy, labour pains, the midwife's management of the umbilical cord, nursing, and infant convulsions often fatal before the seventh day.

• Book VIII, Ch. XXI-XXVI

  Diseases of swine, dogs (including lytta, which induces madness and spreads by bites), horses, asses and elephants, with signs and some remedies.