Historia de los animales
- Idioma:
- inglés
- Estado:
- Obra completa
- Autoría:
- Escrita por el autor
- Estado del texto:
- Sin ruido de escaneo detectado (medición automática sobre todo el texto, no revisada a mano)
- Extensión:
- ~130.000 palabras · 633 pasajes
Cita esta obra
- APAAristóteles. (n.d.). Aristotle's History of Animals [Historia de los animales]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/es/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals
- MLAAristóteles. Aristotle's History of Animals [Historia de los animales]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/es/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals.
- ChicagoAristóteles. Aristotle's History of Animals [Historia de los animales]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/es/works/aristotle/aristotle-s-history-of-animals.
Referencia de la edición que reproduce SigPhi: SigPhi es su reproducción digital, no el editor. El año de la edición no consta en los metadatos (por eso «n.d.») y el traductor solo aparece cuando consta.
De qué trata
La recopilación de Aristóteles de lo que se sabía y de lo que él mismo observó sobre los animales: el primer tratado de zoología que se ha conservado.
Contexto e historia
«Historia» aquí significa «indagación», no relato del pasado. El libro describe partes, hábitos, reproducción, alimentación y comportamiento de centenares de especies, y el método es lo que lo hace notable: Aristóteles disecciona, compara y clasifica, y cuando no ha visto algo lo dice o cita a quien se lo contó. Hay errores —hay muchos, algunos vienen de pescadores y criadores que lo informaron mal—, y hay observaciones que no volvieron a confirmarse hasta el siglo XIX, como la reproducción del pulpo o el desarrollo del embrión del pollo día a día. Darwin escribió que sus dioses de la ciencia eran niños de parvulario al lado del viejo Aristóteles.
Contexto editorial, no una fuente citable: a diferencia de los pasajes de la obra, estos datos no se pueden comprobar contra el 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.…