Vocal sounds and modes of language differ according to locality.
Vocal sounds are characterized chiefly by their pitch, whether high or low, and the kinds of sound capable of being produced are identical within the limits of one and the same species; but articulate sound, that one might reasonably designate ‘language’, differs both in various animals, and also in the same species according to diversity of locality; as for instance, some partridges cackle, and some make a shrill twittering noise. Of little birds, some sing a different note from the parent birds, if they have been removed from the nest and have heard other birds singing; and a mother-nightingale has been observed to give lessons in singing to a young bird, from which spectacle we might obviously infer that the song of the bird was not equally congenital with mere voice, but was something capable of modification and of improvement. Men have the same voice or vocal sounds, but they differ from one another in speech or language.
The elephant makes a vocal sound of a windlike sort by the mouth alone, unaided by the trunk, just like the sound of a man panting or sigh-ing; but, if it employ the trunk as well, the sound produced is like that of a hoarse trumpet.
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div id="section66" class="section" title="10"> 10
With regard to the sleeping and waking of animals, all creatures that are red-blooded and provided with legs give sensible proof that they go to sleep and that they waken up from sleep; for, as a matter of fact, all animals that are furnished with eyelids shut them up when they go to sleep. Furthermore, it would appear that not only do men dream, but horses also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all viviparous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dreaming by barking in their sleep. With regard to oviparous animals we cannot be sure that they dream, but most undoubtedly they sleep. And the same may be said of water animals, such as fishes, molluscs, crustaceans, to wit crawfish and the like. These animals sleep without doubt, although their sleep is of very short duration. The proof of their sleeping cannot be got from the condition of their eyes-for none of these creatures are furnished with eyelids-but can be obtained only from their motionless repose.
Apart from the irritation caused by lice and what are nicknamed fleas, fish are met with in a state so motionless that one might easily catch them by hand; and, as a matter of fact, these little creatures, if the fish 1105
remain long in one position, will attack them in myriads and devour them. For these parasites are found in the depths of the sea, and are so numerous that they devour any bait made of fish’s flesh if it be left long on the ground at the bottom; and fishermen often draw up a cluster of them, all clinging on to the bait.
But it is from the following facts that we may more reasonably infer that fishes sleep. Very often it is possible to take a fish off its guard so far as to catch hold of it or to give it a blow unawares; and all the while that you are preparing to catch or strike it, the fish is quite still but for a slight motion of the tail. And it is quite obvious that the animal is sleeping, from its movements if any disturbance be made during its repose; for it moves just as you would expect in a creature suddenly awakened. Further, owing to their being asleep, fish may be captured by torchlight. The watchmen in the tunny-fishery often take advantage of the fish being asleep to envelop them in a circle of nets; and it is quite obvious that they were thus sleeping by their lying still and allowing the glistening underparts of their bodies to become visible, while the capture is taking Place.
They sleep in the night-time more than during the day; and so soundly at night that you may cast the net without making them stir. Fish, as a general rule, sleep close to the ground, or to the sand or to a stone at the bottom, or after concealing themselves under a rock or the ground. Flat fish go to sleep in the sand; and they can be distinguished by the outlines of their shapes in the sand, and are caught in this position by being speared with pronged instruments. The basse, the chrysophrys or gilthead, the mullet, and fish of the like sort are often caught in the daytime by the prong owing to their having been surprised when sleeping; for it is scarcely probable that fish could be pronged while awake. Cartilaginous fish sleep at times so soundly that they may be caught by hand. The dolphin and the whale, and all such as are furnished with a blow-hole, sleep with the blow-hole over the surface of the water, and breathe through the blow-hole while they keep up a quiet flapping of their fins; indeed, some mariners assure us that they have actually heard the dolphin snoring.
Molluscs sleep like fishes, and crustaceans also. It is plain also that insects sleep; for there can be no mistaking their condition of motionless repose. In the bee the fact of its being asleep is very obvious; for at nighttime bees are at rest and cease to hum. But the fact that insects sleep may be very well seen in the case of common every-day creatures; for not only do they rest at night-time from dimness of vision (and, by the way, 1106
all hard-eyed creatures see but indistinctly), but even if a lighted candle be presented they continue sleeping quite as soundly.
Of all animals man is most given to dreaming. Children and infants do not dream, but in most cases dreaming comes on at the age of four or five years. Instances have been known of full-grown men and women that have never dreamed at all; in exceptional cases of this kind, it has been observed that when a dream occurs in advanced life it prognostic-ates either actual dissolution or a general break-up of the system.
So much then for sensation and for the phenomena of sleeping and of awakening.
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div id="section67" class="section" title="11"> 11
With regard to sex, some animals are divided into male and female, but others are not so divided but can only be said in a comparative way to bring forth young and to be pregnant. In animals that live confined to one spot there is no duality of sex; nor is there such, in fact, in any testaceans. In molluscs and in crustaceans we find male and female: and, indeed, in all animals furnished with feet, biped or quadruped; in short, in all such as by copulation engender either live young or egg or grub. In the several genera, with however certain exceptions, there either absolutely is or absolutely is not a duality of sex. Thus, in quadrupeds the duality is universal, while the absence of such duality is universal in testaceans, and of these creatures, as with plants, some individuals are fruitful and some are not their lying still
But among insects and fishes, some cases are found wholly devoid of this duality of sex. For instance, the eel is neither male nor female, and can engender nothing. In fact, those who assert that eels are at times found with hair-like or worm-like progeny attached, make only random assertions from not having carefully noticed the locality of such attachments. For no eel nor animal of this kind is ever viviparous unless previously oviparous; and no eel was ever yet seen with an egg. And animals that are viviparous have their young in the womb and closely attached, and not in the belly; for, if the embryo were kept in the belly, it would be subjected to the process of digestion like ordinary food. When people rest duality of sex in the eel on the assertion that the head of the male is bigger and longer, and the head of the female smaller and more snubbed, they are taking diversity of species for diversity of sex.
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There are certain fish that are nicknamed the epitragiae, or capon-fish, and, by the way, fish of this description are found in fresh water, as the carp and the balagrus. This sort of fish never has either roe or milt; but they are hard and fat all over, and are furnished with a small gut; and these fish are regarded as of super-excellent quality.
Again, just as in testaceans and in plants there is what bears and engenders, but not what impregnates, so is it, among fishes, with the psetta, the erythrinus, and the channe; for these fish are in all cases found furnished with eggs.
As a general rule, in red-blooded animals furnished with feet and not oviparous, the male is larger and longer-lived than the female (except with the mule, where the female is longer-lived and bigger than the male); whereas in oviparous and vermiparous creatures, as in fishes and in insects, the female is larger than the male; as, for instance, with the serpent, the phalangium or venom-spider, the gecko, and the frog. The same difference in size of the sexes is found in fishes, as, for instance, in the smaller cartilaginous fishes, in the greater part of the gregarious species, and in all that live in and about rocks. The fact that the female is longer-lived than the male is inferred from the fact that female fishes are caught older than males. Furthermore, in all animals the upper and front parts are better, stronger, and more thoroughly equipped in the male than in the female, whereas in the female those parts are the better that may be termed hinder-parts or underparts. And this statement is applicable to man and to all vivipara that have feet. Again, the female is less muscular and less compactly jointed, and more thin and delicate in the hair-that is, where hair is found; and, where there is no hair, less strongly furnished in some analogous substance. And the female is more flaccid in texture of flesh, and more knock-kneed, and the shin-bones are thinner; and the feet are more arched and hollow in such animals as are furnished with feet. And with regard to voice, the female in all animals that are vocal has a thinner and sharper voice than the male; except, by the way, with kine, for the lowing and bellowing of the cow has a deeper note than that of the bull. With regard to organs of defence and offence, such as teeth, tusks, horns, spurs, and the like, these in some species the male possesses and the female does not; as, for instance, the hind has no horns, and where the cock-bird has a spur the hen is entirely destitute of the organ; and in like manner the sow is devoid of tusks. In other species such organs are found in both sexes, but are more perfectly developed in the male; as, for instance, the horn of the bull is more powerful than the horn of the cow.
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The History of Animals, Book V
translated by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
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div id="book5" class="chapter" title="Book V"> 1
As to the parts internal and external that all animals are furnished withal, and further as to the senses, to voice, and sleep, and the duality sex, all these topics have now been touched upon. It now remains for us to discuss, duly and in order, their several modes of propagation.
These modes are many and diverse, and in some respects are like, and in other respects are unlike to one another. As we carried on our previous discussion genus by genus, so we must attempt to follow the same divisions in our present argument; only that whereas in the former case we started with a consideration of the parts of man, in the present case it behoves us to treat of man last of all because he involves most discussion. We shall commence, then, with testaceans, and then proceed to crustaceans, and then to the other genera in due order; and these other genera are, severally, molluscs, and insects, then fishes viviparous and fishes oviparous, and next birds; and afterwards we shall treat of animals provided with feet, both such as are oviparous and such as are viviparous, and we may observe that some quadrupeds are viviparous, but that the only viviparous biped is man.
Now there is one property that animals are found to have in common with plants. For some plants are generated from the seed of plants, whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation of some elemental principle similar to a seed; and of these latter plants some derive their nutriment from the ground, whilst others grow inside other plants, as is mentioned, by the way, in my treatise on Botany. So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs.
In animals where generation goes by heredity, wherever there is duality of sex generation is due to copulation. In the group of fishes, however, there are some that are neither male nor female, and these, 1109
while they are identical generically with other fish, differ from them specifically; but there are others that stand altogether isolated and apart by themselves. Other fishes there are that are always female and never male, and from them are conceived what correspond to the wind-eggs in birds. Such eggs, by the way, in birds are all unfruitful; but it is their nature to be independently capable of generation up to the egg-stage, unless indeed there be some other mode than the one familiar to us of intercourse with the male; but concerning these topics we shall treat more precisely later on. In the case of certain fishes, however, after they have spontaneously generated eggs, these eggs develop into living animals; only that in certain of these cases development is spontaneous, and in others is not independent of the male; and the method of proceeding in regard to these matters will set forth by and by, for the method is somewhat like to the method followed in the case of birds. But whensoever creatures are spontaneously generated, either in other animals, in the soil, or on plants, or in the parts of these, and when such are generated male and female, then from the copulation of such spontaneously generated males and females there is generated a something-a something never identical in shape with the parents, but a something imperfect. For instance, the issue of copulation in lice is nits; in flies, grubs; in fleas, grubs egg-like in shape; and from these issues the parent-species is never reproduced, nor is any animal produced at all, but the like nondescripts only.
First, then, we must proceed to treat of ‘covering’ in regard to such animals as cover and are covered; and then after this to treat in due order of other matters, both the exceptional and those of general occurrence.
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div id="section69" class="section" title="2"> 2
Those animals, then, cover and are covered in which there is a duality of sex, and the modes of covering in such animals are not in all cases similar nor analogous. For the red-blooded animals that are viviparous and furnished with feet have in all cases organs adapted for procreation, but the sexes do not in all cases come together in like manner. Thus, opisthuretic animals copulate with a rearward presentment, as is the case with the lion, the hare, and the lynx; though, by the way, in the case of the hare, the female is often observed to cover the male.
The case is similar in most other such animals; that is to say, the majority of quadrupeds copulate as best they can, the male mounting the 1110
female; and this is the only method of copulating adopted by birds, though there are certain diversities of method observed even in birds.
For in some cases the female squats on the ground and the male mounts on top of her, as is the case with the cock and hen bustard, and the barn-door cock and hen; in other cases, the male mounts without the female squatting, as with the male and female crane; for, with these birds, the male mounts on to the back of the female and covers her, and like the cock-sparrow consumes but very little time in the operation. Of quadrupeds, bears perform the operation lying prone on one another, in the same way as other quadrupeds do while standing up; that is to say, with the belly of the male pressed to the back of the female. Hedgehogs copulate erect, belly to belly.
With regard to large-sized vivipara, the hind only very rarely sustains the mounting of the stag to the full conclusion of the operation, and the same is the case with the cow as regards the bull, owing to the rigidity of the penis of the bull. In point of fact, the females of these animals elicit the sperm of the male in the act of withdrawing from underneath him; and, by the way, this phenomenon has been observed in the case of the stag and hind, domesticated, of course. Covering with the wolf is the same as with the dog. Cats do not copulate with a rearward presentment on the part of the female, but the male stands erect and the female puts herself underneath him; and, by the way, the female cat is peculiarly lecherous, and wheedles the male on to sexual commerce, and cater-wauls during the operation. Camels copulate with the female in a sitting posture, and the male straddles over and covers her, not with the hinder presentment on the female’s part but like the other quadrupeds mentioned above, and they pass the whole day long in the operation; when thus engaged they retire to lonely spots, and none but their keeper dare approach them. And, be it observed, the penis of the camel is so sinewy that bow-strings are manufactured out of it. Elephants, also, copulate in lonely places, and especially by river-sides in their usual haunts; the female squats down, and straddles with her legs, and the male mounts and covers her. The seal covers like all opisthuretic animals, and in this species the copulation extends over a lengthened time, as is the case with the dog and bitch; and the penis in the male seal is exceptionally large.
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div id="section70" class="section" title="3"> 1111
3
Oviparous quadrupeds cover one another in the same way. That is to say, in some cases the male mounts the female precisely as in the viviparous animals, as is observed in both the land and the sea tortoise…
.And these creatures have an organ in which the ducts converge, and with which they perform the act of copulation, as is also observed in the toad, the frog, and all other animals of the same group.
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div id="section71" class="section" title="4"> 4
Long animals devoid of feet, like serpents and muraenae, intertwine in coition, belly to belly. And, in fact, serpents coil round one another so tightly as to present the appearance of a single serpent with a pair of heads. The same mode is followed by the saurians; that is to say, they coil round one another in the act of coition.
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div id="section72" class="section" title="5"> 5
All fishes, with the exception of the flat selachians, lie down side by side, and copulate belly to belly. Fishes, however, that are flat and furnished with tails-as the ray, the trygon, and the like-copulate not only in this way, but also, where the tail from its thinness is no impediment, by mounting of the male upon the female, belly to back. But the rhina or angel-fish, and other like fishes where the tail is large, copulate only by rubbing against one another sideways, belly to belly. Some men assure us that they have seen some of the selachia copulating hindways, dog and bitch. In the cartilaginous species the female is larger than the male; and the same is the case with other fishes for the most part. And among cartilaginous fishes are included, besides those already named, the bos, the lamia, the aetos, the narce or torpedo, the fishing-frog, and all the ga-leodes or sharks and dogfish. Cartilaginous fishes, then, of all kinds, have in many instances been observed copulating in the way above mentioned; for, by the way, in viviparous animals the process of copulation is of longer duration than in the ovipara.
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It is the same with the dolphin and with all cetaceans; that is to say, they come side by side, male and female, and copulate, and the act extends over a time which is neither short nor very long.
Again, in cartilaginous fishes the male, in some species, differs from the female in the fact that he is furnished with two appendages hanging down from about the exit of the residuum, and that the female is not so furnished; and this distinction between the sexes is observed in all the species of the sharks and dog-fish.
Now neither fishes nor any animals devoid of feet are furnished with testicles, but male serpents and male fishes have a pair of ducts which fill with milt or sperm at the rutting season, and discharge, in all cases, a milk-like juice. These ducts unite, as in birds; for birds, by the way, have their testicles in their interior, and so have all ovipara that are furnished with feet. And this union of the ducts is so far continued and of such extension as to enter the receptive organ in the female.
In viviparous animals furnished with feet there is outwardly one and the same duct for the sperm and the liquid residuum; but there are separate ducts internally, as has been observed in the differentiation of the organs. And with such animals as are not viviparous the same passage serves for the discharge also of the solid residuum; although, internally, there are two passages, separate but near to one another. And these remarks apply to both male and female; for these animals are unprovided with a bladder except in the case of the tortoise; and the she-tortoise, though furnished with a bladder, has only one passage; and tortoises, by the way, belong to the ovipara.
In the case of oviparous fishes the process of coition is less open to observation. In point of fact, some are led by the want of actual observation to surmise that the female becomes impregnated by swallowing the seminal fluid of the male. And there can be no doubt that this proceeding on the part of the female is often witnessed; for at the rutting season the females follow the males and perform this operation, and strike the males with their mouths under the belly, and the males are thereby induced to part with the sperm sooner and more plentifully. And, further, at the spawning season the males go in pursuit of the females, and, as the female spawns, the males swallow the eggs; and the species is continued in existence by the spawn that survives this process. On the coast of Phoenicia they take advantage of these instinctive propensities of the two sexes to catch both one and the other: that is to say, by using the male of the grey mullet as a decoy they collect and net the female, and by using the female, the male.
1113
The repeated observation of this phenomenon has led to the notion that the process was equivalent to coition, but the fact is that a similar phenomenon is observable in quadrupeds. For at the rutting seasons both the males and the females take to running at their genitals, and the two sexes take to smelling each other at those parts. (With partridges, by the way, if the female gets to leeward of the male, she becomes thereby impregnated. And often when they happen to be in heat she is affected in this wise by the voice of the male, or by his breathing down on her as he flies overhead; and, by the way, both the male and the female partridge keep the mouth wide open and protrude the tongue in the process of coition.)
The actual process of copulation on the part of oviparous fishes is seldom accurately observed, owing to the fact that they very soon fall aside and slip asunder. But, for all that, the process has been observed to take place in the manner above described.
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div id="section73" class="section" title="6"> 6
Molluscs, such as the octopus, the sepia, and the calamary, have sexual intercourse all in the same way; that is to say, they unite at the mouth, by an interlacing of their tentacles. When, then, the octopus rests its so-called head against the ground and spreads abroad its tentacles, the other sex fits into the outspreading of these tentacles, and the two sexes then bring their suckers into mutual connexion.
Some assert that the male has a kind of penis in one of his tentacles, the one in which are the largest suckers; and they further assert that the organ is tendinous in character, growing attached right up to the middle of the tentacle, and that the latter enables it to enter the nostril or funnel of the female.
Now cuttle-fish and calamaries swim about closely intertwined, with mouths and tentacles facing one another and fitting closely together, and swim thus in opposite directions; and they fit their so-called nostrils into one another, and the one sex swims backwards and the other frontwards during the operation. And the female lays its spawn by the so-called
‘blow-hole’; and, by the way, some declare that it is at this organ that the coition really takes place.
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div id="section74" class="section" title="7"> 1114
7
Crustaceans copulate, as the crawfish, the lobster, the carid and the like, just like the opisthuretic quadrupeds, when the one animal turns up its tail and the other puts his tail on the other’s tail. Copulation takes place in the early spring, near to the shore; and, in fact, the process has often been observed in the case of all these animals. Sometimes it takes place about the time when the figs begin to ripen. Lobsters and carids copulate in like manner.
Crabs copulate at the front parts of one another, belly to belly, throwing their overlapping opercula to meet one another: first the smaller crab mounts the larger at the rear; after he has mounted, the larger one turns on one side. Now, the female differs in no respect from the male except in the circumstance that its operculum is larger, more elevated, and more hairy, and into this operculum it spawns its eggs and in the same neighbourhood is the outlet of the residuum. In the copulative process of these animals there is no protrusion of a member from one animal into the other.
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div id="section75" class="section" title="8"> 8
Insects copulate at the hinder end, and the smaller individuals mount the larger; and the smaller individual is I I is the male. The female pushes from underneath her sexual organ into the body of the male above, this being the reverse of the operation observed in other creatures; and this organ in the case of some insects appears to be disproportionately large when compared to the size of the body, and that too in very minute creatures; in some insects the disproportion is not so striking. This phenomenon may be witnessed if any one will pull asunder flies that are copulating; and, by the way, these creatures are, under the circumstances, averse to separation; for the intercourse of the sexes in their case is of long duration, as may be observed with common everyday insects, such as the fly and the cantharis. They all copulate in the manner above described, the fly, the cantharis, the sphondyle, (the phalangium spider) any others of the kind that copulate at all. The phalangia-that is to say, such of the species as spin webs-perform the operation in the following way: the female takes hold of the suspended web at the middle and gives a pull, and the male gives a counter pull; this operation they repeat until they are drawn in together and interlaced at the hinder ends; for, by the 1115
way, this mode of copulation suits them in consequence of the rotundity of their stomachs.
So much for the modes of sexual intercourse in all animals; but, with regard to the same phenomenon, there are definite laws followed as regards the season of the year and the age of the animal.
Animals in general seem naturally disposed to this intercourse at about the same period of the year, and that is when winter is changing into summer. And this is the season of spring, in which almost all things that fly or walk or swim take to pairing. Some animals pair and breed in autumn also and in winter, as is the case with certain aquatic animals and certain birds. Man pairs and breeds at all seasons, as is the case also with domesticated animals, owing to the shelter and good feeding they enjoy: that is to say, with those whose period of gestation is also comparatively brief, as the sow and the bitch, and with those birds that breed frequently. Many animals time the season of intercourse with a view to the right nurture subsequently of their young. In the human species, the male is more under sexual excitement in winter, and the female in summer.
With birds the far greater part, as has been said, pair and breed during the spring and early summer, with the exception of the halcyon.
The halcyon breeds at the season of the winter solstice. Accordingly, when this season is marked with calm weather, the name of ‘halcyon days’ is given to the seven days preceding, and to as many following, the solstice; as Simonides the poet says:
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div class="quote">
God lulls for fourteen days the winds to sleep In winter; and this temperate interlude
Men call the Holy Season, when the deep
Cradles the mother Halcyon and her brood.
And these days are calm, when southerly winds prevail at the solstice, northerly ones having been the accompaniment of the Pleiads. The halcyon is said to take seven days for building her nest, and the other seven for laying and hatching her eggs. In our country there are not always halcyon days about the time of the winter solstice, but in the Sicilian seas this season of calm is almost periodical. The bird lays about five eggs.
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div id="section76" class="section" title="9"> 1116
9
(The aithyia, or diver, and the larus, or gull, lay