Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 117

Part 11

Of insects, such as have teeth are omnivorous; such as have a tongue feed on liquids only, extracting with that organ juices from all quarters. And of these latter some may be called omnivorous, inasmuch as they feed on every kind of juice, as for instance, the common fly; others are blood-suckers, such as the gadfly and the horse-fly, others again live on the juices of fruits and plants. The bee is the only insect that invariably eschews whatever is rotten; it will touch no article of food unless it have a sweet-tasting juice, and it is particularly fond of drinking water if it be found bubbling up clear from a spring underground.

So much for the food of animals of the leading genera.

Part 12

The habits of animals are all connected with either breeding and the rearing of young, or with the procuring a due supply of food; and these habits are modified so as to suit cold and heat and the variations of the seasons. For all animals have an instinctive perception of the changes of temperature, and, just as men seek shelter in houses in winter, or as men of great possessions spend their summer in cool places and their winter in sunny ones, so also all animals that can do so shift their habitat at various seasons.

Some creatures can make provision against change without stirring from their ordinary haunts; others migrate, quitting Pontus and the cold countries after the autumnal equinox to avoid the approaching winter, and after the spring equinox migrating from warm lands to cool lands to avoid the coming heat. In some cases they migrate from places near at hand, in others they may be said to come from the ends of the world, as in the case of the crane; for these birds migrate from the steppes of Scythia to the marshlands south of Egypt where the Nile has its source. And it is here, by the way, that they are said to fight with the pygmies; and the story is not fabulous, but there is in reality a race of dwarfish men, and the horses are little in proportion, and the men live in caves underground. Pelicans also migrate, and fly from the Strymon to the Ister, and breed on the banks of this river. They depart in flocks, and the birds in front wait for those in the rear, owing to the fact that when the flock is passing over the intervening mountain range, the birds in the rear lose sight of their companions in the van.

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