Aristotle's History of Animals / In Ten Books

by Aristotle

9. Many animals with cloven hoofs have a talus; no animals with their feet in many divisions have a talus, nor has man. The lynx has as it were half a talus, and so has the lion, but it is more intricate, as some pretend. The talus is always in the hind leg, and it is placed upright upon the gamb, with the lower part outwards, and the upper part inwards; the parts called Coa[35] turned inwards towards each other, and the Chia turned outwards, and the projecting portions upwards. This is the position of the talus, in all animals which are furnished with this part. Some animals have a cloven hoof, and a mane, and two horns turned towards each other, as the bonassus, an animal which inhabits the country between Pæonia and Media.

10. All animals with horns are four-footed, unless there is any animal which metaphorically, and for the sake of a word, is said to have horns, as they say that the serpents in the neighbourhood of Thebes in Egypt have, though it is nothing more than an appendage, that is called a horn. The stag is the only animal that has solid horns, the horns of all other animals are hollow for a part of their length, and solid at the extremity; the hollow part is principally formed of skin, and round this is arranged the solid part, as in the horns of oxen. The stag is the only animal which casts its horns; they are reproduced; this takes place every year after the animal has attained the age of two years; other animals never lose their horns unless destroyed by violence.

Chapter III.

1. The parts of the mammæ also, and the organs of generation, are different in man and in other animals. For some have the mammæ forward on or near the breast, and two mammæ with two nipples, as man and the elephant, as I said before, for the elephant has two mammæ near the arm-pits; in the female they are small, and do not bear any proportion to the size of the animal, so that they are scarcely visible in a side view; the males also have mammæ as well as the females, but they are exceedingly small.

2. The bear has four, other animals have two mammæ upon the thighs, and two nipples like sheep; others have four nipples, as the cow; some animals have not their nipples on the breast and thighs, but on the abdomen, as the dog and the hog, they have many nipples, but not all of the same size; other animals also have more than two, as the panther, which has four on the abdomen; the lioness has two on the abdomen, the camel has two mammæ and four nipples, like the cow.

3. Among animals with a solid hoof the males have no mammæ, except some horses which bear a resemblance to their dams. Some males have the penis external, as man, and the horse, and many others; some internal, as the dolphin. Of those animals in which it is external, some have it in front, as those which I have named; and some of these have both the penis and testicles loose, as in man; others have them close to the abdomen; some have them more, others less loose, for this part is not equally free in the boar and the horse.

4. The elephant has a penis like a horse, but small and less in proportion to the size of its body; its testicles are not external but internal, and near the kidneys, wherefore also the work of copulation is quickly performed. The female has the pudendum in the same position as the udder of the sheep, and when excited with desire, it is lifted up outwards, so as to be ready for copulation with the male; and the orifice of the pudendum is very wide. Most animals have the penis in the same direction, but some are retromingent, as the lynx, lion, camel, and hare. In some males, as I have said, the direction of the penis is different, but all females are retromingent, for even in the female elephant the pudendum is placed under the thighs, as in other animals.

5. The penis is very different in different animals, for in some it is cartilaginous and fleshy, as in man; the fleshy part does not swell, but the cartilaginous portion is erected; in others it is sinewy, as the camel and the stag; in others it is bony, as the fox and the wolf, the weasel and the martin, for the martin also has a bony penis.

6. Again, man being a perfect animal, has the upper part of his body less than the lower part; the contrary is the case with other sanguineous animals: by the upper portion of his body we mean the portion of his body from the head to the anus, and by the lower, the parts from hence downwards. In those animals which have feet the hind leg is the lower part of the body in point of size; and in those without legs, the same relation is observed in their various kinds of tails. Such is the nature of perfected animals, but they differ in the development of their parts. Man in the young state has the upper part of his body greater than the lower; but as he grows the proportion of his parts changes, wherefore also he is the only animal which does not move in the same way when young and when grown up, for at first a child crawls like a four-footed animal.

7. Some animals grow in the same proportion throughout, as the dog—others when they are first born have their upper part proportionally less than the lower, but as they approach maturity, the upper parts increase in size, as in the lophuri, for in these animals the part from the hoof to the haunch never grows after their birth.