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100-443: The founding editor of Irish Birds was Clive Hutchinson (1977-1984). Subsequent editors have been Hugh Brazier (1985-1996), Brendan Kavanagh (1997-2000), Stephen Newton (2001-2008), Pat Smiddy (2009-2017) and Barry McMahon (2018-present). This article about a zoology journal is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See tips for writing articles about academic journals . Further suggestions might be found on

200-476: A cartilage for example was the same all the way through, not subdivided into atoms as Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 BC) had argued. The uniform parts can be arranged on a scale of Aristotelian qualities, from the coldest and driest, such as hair, to the hottest and wettest, such as milk. At each stage of metabolism, residual materials are excreted as faeces, urine, and bile. Aristotle's account of temperature regulation sought to explain how an animal maintained

300-403: A distinct group, of over 50 kinds. The egg-bearing tetrapods, Ōiotoka tetrapoda ( reptiles and amphibians ) had blood and four legs, but were cold and laid eggs, so were a distinct group. The snakes , Opheis , similarly had blood, but no legs, and laid dry eggs, so were a separate group. The fishes , Ikhthyes , had blood but no legs, and laid wet eggs, forming a definite group. Among them,

400-601: A laboratory setting. Ethologists have been particularly concerned with the evolution of behavior and the understanding of behavior in terms of the theory of natural selection . In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin , whose book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , influenced many future ethologists. A subfield of ethology is behavioral ecology which attempts to answer Nikolaas Tinbergen 's four questions with regard to animal behavior: what are

500-544: A longer period of gestation, and are heavier. As a final example, fecundity decreases with lifespan, so long-lived kinds like elephants have fewer young in total than short-lived kinds like mice. Aristotle's use of explanation has been considered "fundamentally unscientific". The French playwright Molière 's 1673 play The Imaginary Invalid portrays the quack Aristotelian doctor Argan blandly explaining that opium causes sleep by virtue of its dormitive [sleep-making] principle , its virtus dormitiva . Argan's explanation

600-413: A new footing, by explaining the processes by which it can occur, and providing observational evidence that it had done so. Darwin's theory was rapidly accepted by the scientific community and soon became a central axiom of the rapidly developing science of biology. The basis for modern genetics began with the work of Gregor Mendel on peas in 1865, although the significance of his work was not realized at

700-406: A new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. Having previously been the realm of gentlemen naturalists, over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, zoology became an increasingly professional scientific discipline . Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography, laying

800-709: A process involving the union of a male and female haploid gamete , each gamete formed by meiosis . Ordinarily, gametes produced by separate individuals unite by a process of fertilization to form a diploid zygote that can then develop into a genetically unique individual progeny. However, some animals are also capable, as an alternative reproductive process, to reproduce parthenogenetically. Parthenogenesis has been described in snakes and lizards (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis in squamates ), in amphibians (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis in amphibians ) and in numerous other species (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis ). Generally, meiosis in parthanogenetically reproducing animals occurs by

900-455: A similar process to that in sexually reproducing animals, but the diploid zygote nucleus is generated by the union of two haploid genomes from the same individual rather than from different individuals. Aristotle%27s biology Aristotle's biology is the theory of biology , grounded in systematic observation and collection of data, mainly zoological , embodied in Aristotle 's books on

1000-462: A steady temperature and the continued oscillation of the thorax needed for breathing. The system of regulation of temperature and breathing described in Youth and Old Age, Life and Death 26 is sufficiently detailed to permit modelling as a negative feedback control system (one that maintains a desired property by opposing disturbances to it), with a few assumptions such as a desired temperature to compare

1100-761: A theory of Empedocles, that the vertebral column is divided into vertebrae because, as it happens, the embryo twists about and snaps the column into pieces, is wrong. Aristotle argues instead that the process has a predefined goal: that the "seed" that develops into the embryo began with an inbuilt "potential" to become specific body parts, such as vertebrae. Further, each sort of animal gives rise to animals of its own kind: humans only have human babies. Aristotle has been called unscientific by philosophers from Francis Bacon onwards for at least two reasons: his scientific style, and his use of explanation . His explanations are in turn made cryptic by his complicated system of causes . However, these charges need to be considered in

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1200-453: Is a form of scientific taxonomy . Modern biological classification has its root in the work of Carl Linnaeus , who grouped species according to shared physical characteristics. These groupings have since been revised to improve consistency with the Darwinian principle of common descent . Molecular phylogenetics , which uses nucleic acid sequence as data, has driven many recent revisions and

1300-657: Is administered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature . A merging draft, BioCode, was published in 1997 in an attempt to standardize nomenclature, but has yet to be formally adopted. Vertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of vertebrate animals, that is animals with a backbone , such as fish , amphibians , reptiles , birds and mammals . The various taxonomically oriented disciplines i.e. mammalogy , biological anthropology , herpetology , ornithology , and ichthyology seek to identify and classify species and study

1400-480: Is an integrative field of study, uniting concepts and information from evolutionary biology , taxonomy , ecology , physical geography , geology , paleontology and climatology . The origin of this field of study is widely accredited to Alfred Russel Wallace , a British biologist who had some of his work jointly published with Charles Darwin . Molecular biology studies the common genetic and developmental mechanisms of animals and plants, attempting to answer

1500-491: Is at best empty (devoid of mechanism), at worst vitalist . But the real Aristotle did provide biological mechanisms , in the form of the five processes of metabolism, temperature regulation, information processing, embryonic development, and inheritance that he developed. Further, he provided mechanical, non-vitalist analogies for these theories, mentioning bellows , toy carts, the movement of water through porous pots, and even automatic puppets. Readers of Aristotle have found

1600-402: Is being studied. For example, what is learned about the physiology of yeast cells can also apply to human cells. The field of animal physiology extends the tools and methods of human physiology to non-human species. Physiology studies how, for example, the nervous , immune , endocrine , respiratory , and circulatory systems function and interact. Developmental biology is the study of

1700-421: Is common in modern biology when large amounts of data become available in a new field, such as genomics . It does not result in the same certainty as experimental science, but it sets out testable hypotheses and constructs a narrative explanation of what is observed. In this sense, Aristotle's biology is scientific. From the data he collected and documented, Aristotle inferred quite a number of rules relating

1800-406: Is done on both the microscopic and molecular levels for single-celled organisms such as bacteria as well as the specialized cells in multicellular organisms such as humans . Understanding the structure and function of cells is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. The similarities and differences between cell types are particularly relevant to molecular biology. Anatomy considers

1900-478: Is excreted as urine, bile, and faeces, and the element fire is released as heat. Blood is made into flesh, the rest forming other earthy tissues such as bones, teeth, cartilages and sinews. Leftover blood is made into fat , whether soft suet or hard lard. Some fat from all around the body is made into semen . All the tissues are in Aristotle's view completely uniform parts with no internal structure of any kind;

2000-443: Is likely to continue to do so. Biological classification belongs to the science of zoological systematics . Many scientists now consider the five-kingdom system outdated. Modern alternative classification systems generally start with the three-domain system : Archaea (originally Archaebacteria); Bacteria (originally Eubacteria); Eukaryota (including protists , fungi , plants , and animals ) These domains reflect whether

2100-545: Is one of the primary branches of biology . The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον , zōion ('animal'), and λόγος , logos ('knowledge', 'study'). Although humans have always been interested in the natural history of the animals they saw around them, and used this knowledge to domesticate certain species, the formal study of zoology can be said to have originated with Aristotle . He viewed animals as living organisms, studied their structure and development, and considered their adaptations to their surroundings and

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2200-415: Is partly based on paleontology , which uses the fossil record to answer questions about the mode and tempo of evolution, and partly on the developments in areas such as population genetics and evolutionary theory. Following the development of DNA fingerprinting techniques in the late 20th century, the application of these techniques in zoology has increased the understanding of animal populations. In

2300-417: Is possible given extra assumptions such as of delays or non-linear responses. Aristotle's information processing model has been named the "centralized incoming and outgoing motions model". It sought to explain how changes in the world led to appropriate behaviour in the animal. The system worked as follows. The animal's sense organ is altered when it detects an object. This causes a perceptual change in

2400-406: Is quantitative, and recently a significant amount of work has been done using computer science techniques such as bioinformatics and computational biology . Molecular genetics , the study of gene structure and function, has been among the most prominent sub-fields of molecular biology since the early 2000s. Other branches of biology are informed by molecular biology, by either directly studying

2500-698: Is reflected in zoology by the presence of animals in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Although the concept of zoology as a single coherent field arose much later, the zoological sciences emerged from natural history reaching back to the biological works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world . In the fourth century BC, Aristotle looked at animals as living organisms, studying their structure, development and vital phenomena. He divided them into two groups: animals with blood, equivalent to our concept of vertebrates , and animals without blood, invertebrates . He spent two years on Lesbos , observing and describing

2600-559: Is the genus, and sapiens the specific epithet, both of them combined make up the species name. When writing the scientific name of an organism, it is proper to capitalize the first letter in the genus and put all of the specific epithet in lowercase. Additionally, the entire term may be italicized or underlined. The dominant classification system is called the Linnaean taxonomy . It includes ranks and binomial nomenclature . The classification, taxonomy , and nomenclature of zoological organisms

2700-614: Is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. Evolutionary research is concerned with the origin and descent of species , as well as their change over time, and includes scientists from many taxonomically oriented disciplines. For example, it generally involves scientists who have special training in particular organisms such as mammalogy , ornithology , herpetology , or entomology , but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions about evolution. Evolutionary biology

2800-544: The Hippocratic model which was continuous and blending . The child's sex can be influenced by factors that affect temperature, including the weather, the wind direction, diet, and the father's age. Features other than sex also depend on whether the semen overpowers the menses, so if a man has strong semen, he will have sons who resemble him, while if the semen is weak, he will have daughters who resemble their mother. Aristotle's model of embryogenesis sought to explain how

2900-505: The Lycaeum , where he taught for the last dozen years of his life. His writings on zoology form about a quarter of his surviving work. Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus later wrote a similar book on botany , Enquiry into Plants . Aristotle's biology is constructed on the basis of his theory of form , which is derived from Plato's theory of Forms , but significantly different from it. Plato's Forms were eternal and fixed, being "blueprints in

3000-531: The Ptolemies that advances in biology resumed. The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon , corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain , and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries , noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. Many classical works including those of Aristotle were transmitted from Greek to Syriac, then to Arabic, then to Latin in

3100-538: The Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialised knowledge such as beekeepers and fishermen , and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His observations on catfish , electric fish ( Torpedo ) and angler fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods including the octopus , cuttlefish and paper nautilus . He reported that fishermen had asserted that

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3200-545: The anatomy of different groups. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny (the evolution of species). Physiology studies the mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes of living organisms by attempting to understand how all of the structures function as a whole. The theme of "structure to function" is central to biology. Physiological studies have traditionally been divided into plant physiology and animal physiology , but some principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism

3300-420: The four causes that he uses in his biological explanations opaque, something not helped by many centuries of confused exegesis . For a biological system, these are however straightforward enough. The material cause is simply what a system is constructed from. The goal ( final cause ) and formal cause are what something is for , its function : to a modern biologist, such teleology describes adaptation under

3400-436: The mammals ), being warm, having four legs, and giving birth to their young. The cetaceans , Kētōdē , also had blood and gave birth to live young, but did not have legs, and therefore formed a separate group ( megista genē , defined by a set of functioning "parts" ). The birds, Ornithes had blood and laid eggs, but had only 2 legs and were a distinct form ( eidos ) with feathers and beaks instead of teeth, so they too formed

3500-515: The natural history of the island of Lesbos , where he spent about two years, and the marine life in the seas around it, especially of the Pyrrha lagoon in the island's centre. This study made him the earliest scientist whose written work survives. No similarly detailed work on zoology was attempted until the sixteenth century; accordingly Aristotle remained highly influential for some two thousand years. He returned to Athens and founded his own school,

3600-550: The proximate causes of the behavior, the developmental history of the organism, the survival value and phylogeny of the behavior? Another area of study is animal cognition , which uses laboratory experiments and carefully controlled field studies to investigate an animal's intelligence and learning. Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms on the Earth , focusing on topics like dispersal and migration , plate tectonics , climate change , and cladistics . It

3700-534: The science . Many of his observations were made during his stay on the island of Lesbos , including especially his descriptions of the marine biology of the Pyrrha lagoon, now the Gulf of Kalloni . His theory is based on his concept of form , which derives from but is markedly unlike Plato 's theory of Forms . The theory describes five major biological processes, namely metabolism , temperature regulation , information processing, embryogenesis , and inheritance . Each

3800-547: The sea anemone was in its "own group". Aristotle stated in the History of Animals that all beings were arranged in a fixed scale of perfection, reflected in their form ( eidos ). They stretched from minerals to plants and animals, and on up to man, forming the scala naturae or great chain of being . His system had eleven grades, arranged according to the potentiality of each being, expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals gave birth to warm and wet creatures alive,

3900-399: The taxonomist . Originally it was thought that species were immutable, but with the arrival of Darwin's theory of evolution, the field of cladistics came into being, studying the relationships between the different groups or clades . Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, the evolutionary history of a group is known as its phylogeny , and the relationship between

4000-474: The 13th century, Thomas Aquinas merged Aristotle's metaphysics with Christian theology. Whereas Albert had treated Aristotle's biology as science, writing that experiment was the only safe guide and joining in with the types of observation that Aristotle had made, Aquinas saw Aristotle purely as theory, and Aristotelian thought became associated with scholasticism . The scholastic natural philosophy curriculum omitted most of Aristotle's biology, but included On

4100-542: The 16th century. During the Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey , who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology , and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus , Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , and Buffon who began to classify

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4200-470: The 1980s, developmental biology re-entered evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology . Related fields often considered part of evolutionary biology are phylogenetics , systematics , and taxonomy . Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior under natural conditions, as opposed to behaviorism , which focuses on behavioral response studies in

4300-629: The Middle Ages. Aristotle remained the principal authority in biology for the next two thousand years. The Kitāb al-Hayawān (كتاب الحيوان, Book of Animals ) is a 9th-century Arabic translation of History of Animals : 1–10, On the Parts of Animals : 11–14, and Generation of Animals : 15–19. The book was mentioned by Al-Kindī (d. 850), and commented on by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) in his Kitāb al-Šifā (کتاب الشفاء, The Book of Healing ). Avempace (Ibn Bājja) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) commented on On

4400-788: The Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals , Averroes criticising Avempace's interpretations. When the Christian Alfonso VI of Castile retook the Kingdom of Toledo from the Moors in 1085, an Arabic translation of Aristotle's works, with commentaries by Avicenna and Averroes emerged into European medieval scholarship. Michael Scot translated much of Aristotle's biology into Latin, c. 1225, along with many of Averroes's commentaries. Albertus Magnus commented extensively on Aristotle, but added his own zoological observations and an encyclopedia of animals based on Thomas of Cantimpré . Later in

4500-640: The Soul , as well as the lost drawings of The Anatomies which accompanied the History . Apart from his pupil, Theophrastus , who wrote a matching Enquiry into Plants , no research of comparable scope was carried out in ancient Greece , though Hellenistic medicine in Egypt continued Aristotle's inquiry into the mechanisms of the human body. Aristotle's biology was influential in the medieval Islamic world. Translation of Arabic versions and commentaries into Latin brought knowledge of Aristotle back into Western Europe, but

4600-467: The Soul . Renaissance zoologists made use of Aristotle's zoology in two ways. Especially in Italy, scholars such as Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo lectured and wrote commentaries on Aristotle. Elsewhere, authors used Aristotle as one of their sources, alongside their own and their colleagues' observations, to create new encyclopedias such as Konrad Gessner 's 1551 Historia Animalium . The title and

4700-406: The actual temperature against. The system worked as follows. Heat is constantly lost from the body. Food products reach the heart and are processed into new blood, releasing fire during metabolism, which raises the blood temperature too high. That raises the heart temperature, causing lung volume to increase, in turn raising the airflow at the mouth. The cool air brought in through the mouth reduces

4800-438: The animal and was thus purely biological. Different types of organism possessed different types of soul. Plants had a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth. Animals had both a vegetative and a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation. Humans, uniquely, had a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection. Aristotle's account of metabolism sought to explain how food

4900-417: The animal's seat of sensation , which Aristotle believed was the heart ( cardiocentrism ) rather than the brain . This in turn causes a change in the heart's heat, which causes a quantitative change sufficient to make the heart transmit a mechanical impulse to a limb, which moves, moving the animal's body. The alteration in the heat of the heart also causes a change in the consistency of the joints, which helps

5000-449: The animals and plants, considering the adaptations of different organisms and the function of their parts. Four hundred years later, Roman physician Galen dissected animals to study their anatomy and the function of the different parts, because the dissection of human cadavers was prohibited at the time. This resulted in some of his conclusions being false, but for many centuries it was considered heretical to challenge any of his views, so

5100-424: The article's talk page . Zoology Zoology ( UK : / z u ˈ ɒ l ə dʒ i / zoo- OL -ə-jee , US : / z oʊ ˈ ɒ l ə dʒ i / zoh- OL -ə-jee ) is the scientific study of animals . Its studies include the structure , embryology , classification , habits , and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct , and how they interact with their ecosystems . Zoology

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5200-427: The cells have nuclei or not, as well as differences in the chemical composition of the cell exteriors. Further, each kingdom is broken down recursively until each species is separately classified. The order is: Domain ; kingdom ; phylum ; class ; order ; family ; genus ; species . The scientific name of an organism is generated from its genus and species. For example, humans are listed as Homo sapiens . Homo

5300-416: The child, subject to influence from the environment. The system worked as follows. The father's semen and the mother's menses have movements that encode their parental characteristics. The model is partly asymmetric, as only the father's movements define the form or eidos of the species, while the movements of both the father's and the mother's uniform parts define features other than the form, such as

5400-434: The clades can be shown diagrammatically in a cladogram . Although someone who made a scientific study of animals would historically have described themselves as a zoologist, the term has come to refer to those who deal with individual animals, with others describing themselves more specifically as physiologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, pharmacologists, endocrinologists or parasitologists. Although

5500-658: The cold, dry, nearly mineral eggs of birds. However, Aristotle is careful never to insist that a group fits perfectly in the scale; he knows animals have many combinations of attributes, and that placements are approximate. Aristotle's pupil and successor at the Lyceum , Theophrastus , wrote the History of Plants , the first classical book of botany . It has an Aristotelian structure, but rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus described how plants functioned. Where Aristotle expanded on grand theories, Theophrastus

5600-514: The determination of the double helical structure of the DNA molecule by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology , developmental biology and molecular genetics . The study of systematics was transformed as DNA sequencing elucidated the degrees of affinity between different organisms. Zoology is the branch of science dealing with animals . A species can be defined as

5700-643: The discovery of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology , developmental biology and molecular genetics . The history of zoology traces the study of the animal kingdom from ancient to modern times. Prehistoric people needed to study the animals and plants in their environment to exploit them and survive. Cave paintings, engravings and sculptures in France dating back 15,000 years show bison, horses, and deer in carefully rendered detail. Similar images from other parts of

5800-456: The diversity of life and the fossil record , as well as studying the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek did pioneering work in microscopy and revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms , laying the groundwork for cell theory . van Leeuwenhoek's observations were endorsed by Robert Hooke ; all living organisms were composed of one or more cells and could not generate spontaneously. Cell theory provided

5900-583: The enemy of true science into the 20th century. Leroi noted that in 1985, Peter Medawar stated in "pure seventeenth century" tones that Aristotle had assembled "a strange and generally speaking rather tiresome farrago of hearsay , imperfect observation, wishful thinking and credulity amounting to downright gullibility". Zoologists working in the 19th century, including Georges Cuvier , Johannes Peter Müller , and Louis Agassiz admired Aristotle's biology and investigated some of his observations. D'Arcy Thompson translated History of Animals in 1910, making

6000-458: The father's eye colour or the mother's nose shape. Aristotle's theory has some symmetry, as semen movements carry maleness while the menses carry femaleness. If the semen is hot enough to overpower the cold menses, the child will be a boy; but if it is too cold to do this, the child will be a girl. Inheritance is thus particulate (definitely one trait or another), as in Mendelian genetics , unlike

6100-404: The forms of macroscopic structures such as organs and organ systems. It focuses on how organs and organ systems work together in the bodies of humans and other animals, in addition to how they work independently. Anatomy and cell biology are two studies that are closely related, and can be categorized under "structural" studies. Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in

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6200-431: The foundations for biogeography , ecology and ethology . Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species . These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology , were synthesized in the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution by natural selection ; in this Darwin placed the theory of organic evolution on

6300-502: The function of their parts. Modern zoology has its origins during the Renaissance and early modern period, with Carl Linnaeus , Antonie van Leeuwenhoek , Robert Hooke , Charles Darwin , Gregor Mendel and many others. The study of animals has largely moved on to deal with form and function, adaptations, relationships between groups, behaviour and ecology. Zoology has increasingly been subdivided into disciplines such as classification , physiology , biochemistry and evolution . With

6400-414: The group he called Selachē (roughly, the modern zoologist's selachians ). Among many other things, he gave accurate descriptions of the four-chambered stomachs of ruminants , and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the dogfish . His accounts of about 35 animals are sufficiently detailed to convince biologists that he dissected those species, indeed vivisecting some; he mentions

6500-413: The heart appear; this is vital, as the heart nourishes all other organs. Aristotle observed that the heart is the first organ seen to be active (beating) in a hen's egg. The pneuma then makes the other organs develop. Aristotle asserts in his Physics that according to Empedocles , order "spontaneously" appears in the developing embryo. In The Parts of Animals , he argues that what he describes as

6600-464: The heart temperature, so the lung volume accordingly decreases, restoring the temperature to normal. The mechanism only works if the air is cooler than the reference temperature. If the air is hotter than that, the system becomes a positive feedback cycle, the body's fire is put out, and death follows. The system as described damps out fluctuations in temperature. Aristotle however predicted that his system would cause lung oscillation (breathing), which

6700-472: The informational nature of form by arguing that a body is compounded of elements like earth and fire, just as a word is compounded of letters in a specific order. As analysed by the evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi , Aristotle's biology included five major interlocking processes : The five processes formed what Aristotle called the soul : it was not something extra, but the system consisting exactly of these mechanisms. The Aristotelian soul died with

6800-429: The inherited parental characteristics cause the formation and development of an embryo. The system worked as follows. First, the father's semen curdles the mother's menses, which Aristotle compares with how rennet (an enzyme from a cow's stomach) curdles milk in cheesemaking . This forms the embryo; it is then developed by the action of the pneuma (literally, breath or spirit) in the semen. The pneuma first makes

6900-476: The interactions of molecules in their own right such as in cell biology and developmental biology , or indirectly, where molecular techniques are used to infer historical attributes of populations or species , as in fields in evolutionary biology such as population genetics and phylogenetics . There is also a long tradition of studying biomolecules "from the ground up", or molecularly, in biophysics . Animals generally reproduce by sexual reproduction ,

7000-420: The internal anatomy of over a hundred animals, and dissected around 35 of these. Aristotle's writings on biology, the first in the history of science , are scattered across several books, forming about a quarter of his writings that have survived . The main biology texts were the History of Animals , Generation of Animals , Movement of Animals , Progression of Animals , Parts of Animals , and On

7100-443: The internal anatomy of roughly 110 animals in total. Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of birds, mammals, actinopterygians and selachians in History of Animals and Parts of Animals . Aristotle distinguished animals with blood, Enhaima (the modern zoologist's vertebrates ) and animals without blood, Anhaima ( invertebrates ). Animals with blood included live-bearing tetrapods, Zōiotoka tetrapoda (roughly,

7200-423: The kind of animal called a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood. Aristotle further noted that there are many bird forms within the bird kind – cranes , eagles , crows , bustards , sparrows , and so on, just as there are many forms of fishes within the fish kind. He sometimes called these atoma eidē , indivisible forms. Human is one of these indivisible forms: Socrates and

7300-404: The largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sex can produce fertile offspring; about 1.5 million species of animal have been described and it has been estimated that as many as 8 million animal species may exist. An early necessity was to identify the organisms and group them according to their characteristics, differences and relationships, and this is the field of

7400-401: The life-history features of the live-bearing tetrapods (terrestrial placental mammals ) that he studied. Among these correct predictions are the following. Brood size decreases with (adult) body mass, so that an elephant has fewer young (usually just one) per brood than a mouse . Lifespan increases with gestation period , and also with body mass, so that elephants live longer than mice, have

7500-576: The light of what was known in his own time. His systematic gathering of data, too, is obscured by the lack of modern methods of presentation, such as tables of data: for example, the whole of History of Animals Book VI is taken up with a list of observations of the life histories of birds that "would now be summarized in a single table in Nature – and in the Online Supplementary Information at that". Aristotle did not do experiments in

7600-400: The limb to move. There is thus a causal chain which transmits information from a sense organ to an organ capable of making decisions, and onwards to a motor organ. In this respect, the model is analogous to a modern understanding of information processing such as in sensory-motor coupling . Aristotle's inheritance model sought to explain how the parents' characteristics are transmitted to

7700-410: The lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs. The system was based on Aristotle's interpretation of the four elements in his On Generation and Corruption : Fire (hot and dry); Air (hot and wet); Water (cold and wet); and Earth (cold and dry). These are arranged from the most energetic to the least, so the warm, wet young raised in a womb with a placenta were higher on the scale than

7800-464: The mind of God". Real things in the world could, in Plato's view, at best be approximations to these perfect Forms. Aristotle heard Plato's view and developed it into a set of three biological concepts. He uses the same Greek word, εἶδος ( eidos ), to mean first of all the set of visible features that uniquely characterised a kind of animal. Aristotle used the word γένος (génos) to mean a kind. For example,

7900-540: The modern sense. He used the ancient Greek term pepeiramenoi to mean observations, or at most investigative procedures, such as (in Generation of Animals ) finding a fertilised hen's egg of a suitable stage and opening it so as to be able to see the embryo's heart inside. Instead, he practised a different style of science: systematically gathering data, discovering patterns common to whole groups of animals, and inferring possible causal explanations from these. This style

8000-420: The octopus’s hectocotyl arm was used in sexual reproduction. He admitted its use in mating 'only for the sake of attachment', but rejected the idea that it was useful for generation, since "it is outside the passage and indeed outside the body". In the 19th century, biologists found that the reported function was correct. He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that sharks and rays were part of

8100-802: The only biological work widely taught in medieval universities was On the Soul . The association of his work with medieval scholasticism , as well as errors in his theories, caused Early Modern scientists such as Galileo and William Harvey to reject Aristotle. Criticism of his errors and secondhand reports continued for centuries. He has found better acceptance among zoologists , and some of his long-derided observations in marine biology have been found in modern times to be true. Aristotle (384–322 BC) studied at Plato's Academy in Athens , remaining there for about 20 years. Like Plato , he sought universals in his philosophy , but unlike Plato he backed up his views with detailed and systematic observation, notably of

8200-425: The parents' seeds, which combine. These seeds thus contain form, or in modern terms information. Aristotle makes clear that he sometimes intends this third sense by giving the analogy of a woodcarving . It takes its form from wood (its material cause); the tools and carving technique used to make it (its efficient cause); and the design laid out for it (its eidos or embedded information). Aristotle further emphasises

8300-475: The philosophical approach were Aristotelian, but the work was largely new. Edward Wotton similarly helped to found modern zoology by arranging the animals according to Aristotle's theories, separating out folklore from his 1552 De differentiis animalium . Aristotle's system of classification had thus remained influential for many centuries. In the Early Modern period, Aristotle came to represent all that

8400-431: The pressure of natural selection . The efficient cause is how a system develops and moves: to a modern biologist, those are explained by developmental biology and physiology . Biologists continue to offer explanations of these same kinds . Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the surrounding seas, including in particular

8500-517: The processes by which animals and plants reproduce and grow. The discipline includes the study of embryonic development , cellular differentiation , regeneration , asexual and sexual reproduction , metamorphosis , and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism. Development of both animals and plants is further considered in the articles on evolution , population genetics , heredity , genetic variability , Mendelian inheritance , and reproduction . Evolutionary biology

8600-493: The questions regarding the mechanisms of genetic inheritance and the structure of the gene . In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA and the interactions within the molecule, and this publication jump-started research into molecular biology and increased interest in the subject. While researchers practice techniques specific to molecular biology, it is common to combine these with methods from genetics and biochemistry . Much of molecular biology

8700-409: The rest of us are all different individually, but we all have human form. More recent studies have shown that Aristotle used the terms γένος (génos) and εἶδος ( eidos ) in a relative way. A taxon that is considered an eidos in one context can be considered a génos (which includes various eide ) in another. Finally, Aristotle observed that the child does not take just any form, but is given it by

8800-494: The results of his own investigations. His general approach was surprisingly modern, and he wrote, "For it is [the task] of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of natural things." An early pioneer was Conrad Gessner , whose monumental 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, Historia animalium , was published in four volumes between 1551 and 1558. In Europe, Galen's work on anatomy remained largely unsurpassed and unchallenged up until

8900-503: The rise of the germ theory of disease , though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery. In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics , and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the modern synthesis created evolutionary biology . Research in cell biology is interconnected to other fields such as genetics, biochemistry , medical microbiology , immunology , and cytochemistry . With

9000-659: The selachians Selakhē (sharks and rays), had cartilages instead of bones and were viviparous (Aristotle did not know that some selachians are oviparous). Animals without blood were divided into soft-shelled Malakostraka ( crabs , lobsters , and shrimps ); hard-shelled Ostrakoderma ( gastropods and bivalves ); soft-bodied Malakia ( cephalopods ); and divisible animals Entoma ( insects , spiders , scorpions , ticks ). Other animals without blood included fish lice , hermit crabs , red coral , sea anemones , sponges , starfish and various worms: Aristotle did not classify these into groups, although Aristotle mentioned that

9100-499: The structures and mechanisms specific to those groups. The rest of the animal kingdom is dealt with by invertebrate zoology , a vast and very diverse group of animals that includes sponges , echinoderms , tunicates , worms , molluscs , arthropods and many other phyla , but single-celled organisms or protists are not usually included. Cell biology studies the structural and physiological properties of cells , including their behavior , interactions, and environment . This

9200-529: The study of anatomy stultified. During the post-classical era , Middle Eastern science and medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts from Ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and Persia as well as the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda , while making numerous advances and innovations. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus produced commentaries and paraphrases of all Aristotle's works; his books on topics like botany , zoology, and minerals included information from ancient sources, but also

9300-565: The study of animal life is ancient, its scientific incarnation is relatively modern. This mirrors the transition from natural history to biology at the start of the 19th century. Since Hunter and Cuvier , comparative anatomical study has been associated with morphography , shaping the modern areas of zoological investigation: anatomy , physiology , histology , embryology , teratology and ethology . Modern zoology first arose in German and British universities. In Britain, Thomas Henry Huxley

9400-433: The time. Darwin gave a new direction to morphology and physiology , by uniting them in a common biological theory: the theory of organic evolution. The result was a reconstruction of the classification of animals upon a genealogical basis, fresh investigation of the development of animals, and early attempts to determine their genetic relationships. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and

9500-489: The world illustrated mostly the animals hunted for food and the savage animals. The Neolithic Revolution , which is characterized by the domestication of animals , continued throughout Antiquity. Ancient knowledge of wildlife is illustrated by the realistic depictions of wild and domestic animals in the Near East, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, including husbandry practices and techniques, hunting and fishing. The invention of writing

9600-502: Was a prominent figure. His ideas were centered on the morphology of animals. Many consider him the greatest comparative anatomist of the latter half of the 19th century. Similar to Hunter , his courses were composed of lectures and laboratory practical classes in contrast to the previous format of lectures only. Scientific classification in zoology , is a method by which zoologists group and categorize organisms by biological type , such as genus or species . Biological classification

9700-615: Was defined in some detail, in some cases sufficient to enable modern biologists to create mathematical models of the mechanisms described. Aristotle's method, too, resembled the style of science used by modern biologists when exploring a new area, with systematic data collection, discovery of patterns, and inference of possible causal explanations from these. He did not perform experiments in the modern sense, but made observations of living animals and carried out dissections. He names some 500 species of bird, mammal, and fish; and he distinguishes dozens of insects and other invertebrates. He describes

9800-486: Was obsolete, scholastic, and wrong, not helped by his association with medieval theology. In 1632, Galileo represented Aristotelianism in his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) by the strawman Simplicio ("Simpleton" ). That same year, William Harvey proved Aristotle wrong by demonstrating that blood circulates . Aristotle still represented

9900-447: Was processed by the body to provide both heat and the materials for the body's construction and maintenance. The metabolic system for live-bearing tetrapods described in the Parts of Animals can be modelled as an open system , a branching tree of flows of material through the body. The system worked as follows. The incoming material, food, enters the body and is concocted into blood; waste

10000-399: Was quietly empirical. Where Aristotle insisted that species have a fixed place on the scala naturae , Theophrastus suggests that one kind of plant can transform into another, as when a field sown to wheat turns to the weed darnel . After Theophrastus, though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly. It is not until the age of Alexandria under

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