History of Animals
Generally seen as a pioneering work of zoology, Aristotle frames his text by explaining that he is investigating the what (the existing facts about animals) prior to establishing the why (the causes of these characteristics).
The History of Animals contains many accurate eye-witness observations, in particular of the marine biology around the island of Lesbos, such as that the octopus had colour-changing abilities and a sperm-transferring tentacle, that the young of a dogfish grow inside their mother's body, or that the male of a river catfish guards the eggs after the female has left.
It continued to be a primary source of knowledge until zoologists in the sixteenth century, such as Conrad Gessner, all influenced by Aristotle, wrote their own studies of the subject.
Aristotle describes the parts that the human body is made of, such as the skull, brain, face, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, thorax, belly, heart, viscera, genitalia, and limbs.
Books V and VI Reproduction, spontaneous and sexual of marine invertebrates, birds, quadrupeds, snakes, fish, and terrestrial arthropods including ichneumon wasps, bees, ants, scorpions, spiders, and grasshoppers.
Book VII Reproduction of man, including puberty, conception, pregnancy, lactation, the embryo, labour, milk, and diseases of infants.
[8] The History of Animals contains a large number of eye-witness observations, in particular of marine biology, in sharp contrast to Plato's "symbolic zoology".
The octopus is a stupid creature, for it will approach a man's hand if it be lowered in the water; but it is neat and thrifty in its habits: that is, it lays up stores in its nest, and, after eating up all that is eatable, it ejects the shells and sheaths of crabs and shell-fish, and the skeletons of little fishes.
[12] Aristotle also noted that the young of the dogfish grow inside their mother's body attached by a cord to something like a placenta (a yolk sac).
Like other classical authors such as Pliny the Elder, Aristotle also gathered evidence from travellers and people with specialised knowledge, such as fishermen and beekeepers, without much attempt to corroborate what they said.
[18] Katrin Weigmann wrote "[Aristotle's] statement that flies have four legs was repeated in natural history texts for more than a thousand years despite the fact that a little counting would have proven otherwise.
[18] More generally, Aristotle's biology, described across the five books sometimes called On Animals and some of his minor works, the Parva Naturalia, defines what in modern terms is a set of models of metabolism, temperature regulation, information processing, inheritance, and embryogenesis.
All of these are wrong in the sense that modern science has replaced them with different models, but they were scientific in that they attempted to explain observed phenomena, proposed mechanisms, and made testable predictions.
[27] The comparative anatomist Richard Owen said in 1837 that "Zoological Science sprang from [Aristotle's] labours, we may almost say, like Minerva from the Head of Jove, in a state of noble and splendid maturity".
[28] Ben Waggoner of the University of California Museum of Paleontology wrote that Though Aristotle's work in zoology was not without errors, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time, and remained the ultimate authority for many centuries after his death.
His observations on the anatomy of octopus, cuttlefish, crustaceans, and many other marine invertebrates are remarkably accurate, and could only have been made from first-hand experience with dissection.
[29]Walter Pagel comments that Aristotle "perceptibly influenced" the founders of modern zoology, the Swiss Conrad Gessner with his 1551–1558 Historiae animalium, the Italian Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), the French Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566), and the Dutch Volcher Coiter (1534–1576), while his methods of looking at time series and making use of comparative anatomy assisted the Englishman William Harvey in his 1651 work on embryology.
