by Aristotle
33 · In Scythia there is found a bird as large as the great bustard. The female lays two eggs, but does not hatch them, but hides them in the skin of a hare or fox and leaves them there, and, when it is not in quest of prey, it keeps a watch on [15] them on a high tree; if any man tries to climb the tree, it fights and strikes him with its wing, just as eagles do.
34 · The owl and the night-raven and all the birds that see poorly in the daytime seek their prey in the night, but not all the night through, but at evening [20] and dawn. Their food consists of mice, lizards, chafers and the like little creatures. The so-called phene is fond of its young, provides its food with ease, fetches food to its nest, and is of a kindly disposition. It rears its own young and those of the eagle as [25] well; for when the eagle ejects its young from the nest, this bird catches them and feeds them. For the eagle ejects the young birds prematurely, before they are able to feed themselves, or to fly. It appears to do so from jealousy; for it is by nature jealous, and is so ravenous as to grab furiously at its food; and when it does grab at [30] its food, it grabs it in large morsels. It is accordingly jealous of the young birds as they approach maturity, since they are getting good appetites, and so it scratches them with its talons. The young birds fight also with one another, to secure a morsel of food or a comfortable position, whereupon the mother-bird beats them and ejects them from the nest; the young ones scream at this treatment, and the phene hearing them catches them as they fall. The phene has a film over its eyes and sees badly, [620a1] but the sea-eagle is very keen-sighted, and before its young are fledged tries to make them stare at the sun, and beats the one that refuses to do so, and twists him back in the sun’s direction; and if one of them gets watery eyes in the process, it kills him, [5] and rears the other. It lives near the sea, and feeds, as has been said, on sea-birds; when in pursuit of them it catches them one by one, watching the moment when the bird rises to the surface from its dive. When a sea-bird, emerging from the water, sees the sea-eagle, he in terror dives under, intending to rise again elsewhere; the [10] eagle, however, owing to its keenness of vision, keeps flying after him until he either drowns the bird or catches him on the surface. The eagle never attacks these birds when they are in a swarm, for they keep him off by raising a shower of water-drops with their wings.
35 · The cepphus is caught by means of sea-foam; the bird snaps at the foam, and consequently fishermen catch it by sluicing with showers of sea-water. These birds grow to be plump and fat; their flesh has a good odour, excepting the [15] hinder quarters, which smell of shore-weed.
36 · Of hawks, the strongest is the buzzard; the next in point of courage is the merlin; and the circus ranks third; other diverse kinds are the asterias, the pigeon-hawk, and the pternis; the broader-winged hawk is called the half-buzzard; [20] others go by the name of hobby-hawk, or sparrow-hawk, or marsh-hawk, or ‘toad-catcher’. Birds of this latter species find their food with very little difficulty, and flutter along the ground. Some say that there are ten species of hawks, all differing from one another. One hawk, they say, will strike and grab the pigeon as it [25] rests on the ground, but never touch it while it is in flight; another hawk attacks the pigeon when it is perched upon a tree or any elevation, but never touches it when it is on the ground or on the wing; other hawks attack their prey only when it is on the wing and do not touch it when it is on the ground or perching anywhere else. They [30] say that pigeons can distinguish the various species: so that, when a hawk is an assailant, if it be one that attacks its prey when the prey is on the wing, the pigeon will sit still; if it be one that attacks sitting prey, the pigeon will rise up and fly away.
In Thrace, in the district sometimes called that of Cedripolis, men hunt for little birds in the marshes with the aid of hawks. The men with sticks in their hands [620b1] go beating at the reeds and brushwood to frighten the birds out, and the hawks show themselves overhead and pursue them down. In fear, they fly down to the ground again, where the men strike them with their sticks and capture them. They give a portion of their booty to the hawks; that is, they throw some of the birds up in the [5] air, and the hawks catch them.
In the neighbourhood of Lake Maeotis, it is said, wolves act in concert with the fishermen, and if the fishermen decline to share with them, they tear their nets in pieces as they lie drying on the shore.
37 · So much for the habits of birds.
[10] In marine creatures, also, one may observe many ingenious devices adapted to the circumstances of their lives. For the accounts commonly given of the so-called fishing-frog are quite true; as are also those given of the torpedo. The fishing-frog hunts little fish with a set of filaments that project in front of its eyes; they are long [15] and thin like hairs, and are round at the tips; they lie on either side, and are used as baits. Accordingly, when the animal stirs up a place full of sand and mud and conceals itself therein, it raises the filaments, and, when the little fish strike against them, it draws them in underneath into its mouth. The torpedo narcotizes the [20] creatures that it wants to catch, overpowering them by the power of shock10 that is resident in its body, and feeds upon them; it also hides in the sand and mud, and catches all the creatures that swim in its way and come under its narcotizing influence. This phenomenon has been actually observed in operation. The sting-ray also conceals itself, but not exactly in the same way. That the creatures get their [25] living by this means is obvious from the fact that, whereas they are peculiarly slow, they are often caught with mullets in their interior, the swiftest of fishes. Furthermore, the fishing-frog is unusually thin when he is caught after losing the tips of his filaments, and the torpedo is known to cause a numbness even in human beings. Again, the hake, the ray, the flat-fish, and the angel-fish burrow in the sand, [30] and after concealing themselves angle with the filaments on their mouths, that fishermen call their fishing-rods, and the little creatures on which they feed swim up to the filaments taking them for bits of sea-weed, such as they feed upon.
Wherever an anthias-fish is seen, there will be no dangerous creatures in the vicinity, and sponge-divers will dive in security, and they call these ‘holy-fish’. It is a sort of coincidence, like the fact that wherever snails are present you may be sure there is neither pig nor partridge in the neighbourhood; for both pig and partridge [621a1] eat up the snails.
The sea-serpent resembles the conger in colour and shape, but is of lesser bulk and more rapid in its movements. If it is caught11 and thrown away, it will bore a hole with its snout and burrow rapidly in the sand; its snout is sharper than that of [5] ordinary serpents. The so-called sea-scolopendra, after swallowing the hook, turns itself inside out until it ejects it, and then it again turns itself outside in. The sea-scolopendra, like the land-scolopendra, will come to a savoury bait; the creature [10] does not bite with its teeth, but stings by contact with its entire body like the so-called sea-nettle. The so-called fox-shark, when it finds it has swallowed the hook, tries to get rid of it as the scolopendra does: it runs up the fishing-line, and bites it off short; it is caught in some districts in deep and rapid waters, with [15] night-lines.
The bonitos swarm together when they espy a dangerous creature, and the largest of them swim round it, and if it touches one of the shoal they try to repel it; they have strong teeth. Amongst other fish, a lamia-shark, after falling in amongst [20] a shoal, has been seen to be covered with wounds.
Of river-fish, the male of the sheat-fish is remarkably attentive to the young. The female after parturition goes away; the male stays and keeps on guard where the spawn is most abundant, contenting himself with keeping off all other little fishes that might steal the spawn, and this he does for forty or fifty days, until the [25] young are sufficiently grown to make away from the other fishes for themselves. The fishermen can tell where he is on guard; for, in warding off the little fishes, he makes a rush in the water and gives utterance to a kind of muttering noise. He is so earnest in the performance of his parental duties that the fishermen at times, if the [30] egg
s be attached to the roots of water-plants deep in the water, drag them into as shallow a place as possible; the male fish will still keep by the eggs, and, if it is young, will be caught by the hook when snapping at the little fish that come by; if, however, he be sensible by experience of the danger of the hook, he will still keep by [621b1] his charge, and with his extremely strong teeth will bite the hook in pieces.
All fishes, both those that wander about and those that are stationary, occupy the districts where they were born or very similar places, for their natural food is found there. Carnivorous fish wander most; and all fish are carnivorous with the [5] exception of a few, such as the mullet, the saupe, the red mullet, and the chalcis. The so-called pholis gives out a mucous discharge, which envelops the creature in a [10] kind of nest. Of shell-fish, and fish that have no feet, the scallop moves with greatest force and to the greatest distance, impelled along by some internal energy; the murex, and others that resemble it, move hardly at all. Out of the lagoon of Pyrrha all the fishes swim in winter-time, except the sea-gudgeon; they swim out owing to the cold, for the narrow waters are colder than the outer sea, and on the return of [15] the early summer they all swim back again. In the lagoon no scarus is found, nor thritta, nor any other species of the spiny fish, no spotted dogfish, no spiny dogfish, no crayfish, no octopus either of the common or the musky kinds, and certain other fish are also absent; but of fish that are found in the lagoon the white gudgeon is not [20] a marine fish. Of fishes the oviparous are in their prime in the early summer until the spawning time; the viviparous in the autumn, as is also the case with the mullet, the red mullet, and all such fish. All the fishes of the outer sea or of the lagoon bring forth their eggs or young in the lagoon; sexual union takes place in the autumn, and [25] parturition in the spring. With the selachia, the males and females swarm together in the autumn for the sake of sexual union; in the spring they come swimming in, and keep apart until after parturition; the two sexes are often taken linked together in sexual union.
Of cephalopods, the cuttlefish is the most cunning, and is the only species that [30] employs its dark liquid for the sake of concealment as well as from fear: the octopus and calamary make the discharge solely from fear. These creatures never discharge the pigment in its entirety; and after a discharge the pigment accumulates again. The cuttlefish, as has been said, often uses its colouring pigment for concealment; it [622a1] shows itself in front of the pigment and then retreats back into it; it also hunts with its long tentacles not only little fishes, but often even mullets. The octopus is a stupid creature, for it will approach a man’s hand if it be lowered in the water; but it [5] is thrifty in its habits: that is, it lays up stores in its nest, and, after eating up all that is eatable, it ejects the shells and sheaths of crabs and shell-fish, and the skeletons of little fishes. It seeks its prey by so changing its colour as to render it like the colour [10] of the stones adjacent to it; it does so also when alarmed. By some the cuttlefish is said to perform the same trick; that is, they say it can change its colour so as to make it resemble the colour of its habitat. The only fish that can do this is the angel-fish, that is, it can change its colour like the octopus. The octopus as a rule does not live [15] the year out. It has a natural tendency to run off its liquid; for, if kneaded, it keeps losing substance and at last disappears. The female after parturition is peculiarly subject to this: it becomes stupid; if tossed about by waves, it submits impassively; a man, if he dived, could catch it with the hand; it gets covered over with slime, and [20] makes no effort to catch its wonted prey. The male becomes leathery and clammy. As a proof that they do not live into a second year there is the fact that, after the birth of the little octopuses in the late summer or beginning of autumn, it is seldom that a large-sized octopus is visible, whereas a little before this time of year the [25] creature is at its largest. After the eggs are laid, they say that both the male and the female grow so old and feeble that they are preyed upon by little fish, and with ease dragged from their holes; and that this could not have been done previously; they say also that this is not the case with the small and young octopus, but that the [30] young creature is much stronger than the grown-up one. Neither does the cuttlefish live into a second year. The octopus is the only cephalopod that ventures on to dry land; it walks on rough ground and avoids what is smooth; it is firm all over when you squeeze it, excepting in the neck. So much for the cephalopods.12 [622b1]
It is also said that they make a thin rough shell about them like a hard sheath, and that this is made larger as the animal grows larger, and that it comes out of the sheath as though out of a den or dwelling-place.
The nautilus is an octopus, but one peculiar both in its nature and its habits. It [5] rises up from deep water and swims on the surface; it rises with its shell down-turned in order that it may rise the more easily and swim with it empty, but after reaching the surface it shifts the position of the shell. In between its tentacles it [10] has a certain amount of web-growth, resembling the substance between the toes of web-footed birds; only that with these latter the substance is thick, while with the nautilus it is thin and like a spider’s web. It uses this structure, when a breeze is blowing, for a sail, and lets down two of its feelers alongside as rudder-oars. If it be frightened, it fills its shell with water and sinks. With regard to the mode of [15] generation and the growth of the shell knowledge from observation is not yet satisfactory; it does not appear to be produced by copulation, but to grow like other shell-fish; neither is it ascertained for certain whether the animal can live when stripped of the shell.
38 · Of all insects, one may almost say of all living creatures, the most [20] industrious are the ant, the bee, the hornet, the wasp, and in point of fact all creatures akin to these; of spiders some are more skilful and more resourceful than others. The way in which ants work is open to ordinary observation; how they all march one after the other when they are engaged in putting away and storing up [25] their food; all this may be seen, for they carry on their work even during bright moonlight nights.
39 · Of spiders and phalangia there are many species. Of the venomous phalangia there are two; one that resembles the so-called wolf-spider, small, speckled, and tapering to a point; it moves with leaps, and is nicknamed ‘the flea’; [30] the other kind is large, black in colour, with long front legs; it is heavy in its movements, walks slowly, is not very strong, and never leaps. (Of all the other species wherewith druggists supply themselves, some give a weak bite, and others [623a1] never bite at all. There is another kind, comprising the so-called wolf-spiders.) Of these spiders the small one weaves no web, and the large weaves a rude and poorly built one on the ground or on dry stone walls. It always builds its web over hollow places inside of which it keeps a watch on the end-threads, until some creature gets [5] into the web and begins to struggle, when out the spider pounces. The speckled kind makes a little shabby web under trees.