* Darwin, of course, did do experiments – he bred pigeons, tested how long snails could survive in saltwater and how bees made their combs – but such was hardly the stuff from which the Origin was made. In 1860, Richard Owen wrote an anonymous review of the Origin. Eager to deny Darwin’s originality, he focused on the ‘direct observations of nature which seemed to be novel and original’ in the work – the experiments. The extent to which he misunderstood Darwin’s method and achievement would be funny were it not so plainly malicious.
* Scott Emmons quoting Paul Sternberg.
* Tipton (2006).
* Koutsogiannopoulos (2010).
* True, the African chameleon, Chamaeleo africanus, occurs in Pylos in the Peloponnese, but that’s thought to be a Roman introduction. Why the Romans should have carried chameleons around the Mediterranean basin is hard to say.
* HA: CRESSWELL and SCHNEIDER (1862), THOMPSON (1910), PECK (1965), PECK (1970) and BALME (1991). PA: OGLE (1882), LENNOX (2001a) and KULLMANN (2007).
* KITCHELL (2014) on mammals and some other animals, THOMPSON (1895) and ARNOTT (2007) on birds, THOMPSON (1947) on fishes, DAVIES and KATHIRITHAMY (1986) on insects, SCHARFENBERG (2001) on cephalopods and VOULTSIADOU and VAFIDIS (2007) on marine invertebrates.
* Aristotle also uses this term for the regular mule; its relationship to the onager is unclear; see KITCHELL (2014).
* Aristotle does not say where his elephant was seen; it is most likely the Asian elephant on the basis of its association with Alexander’s expeditions alone.
* Beginning with WATSON (1877), there’s a long, and incorrect, consensus that Aristotle’s glanos/hyaina is the spotted hyena, Crocuta crocuta, but the mane alone identifies it as the striped hyena Hyena hyena. Furthermore, Aristotle’s description of its genitals doesn’t fit the massively masculinized genitalia of Crocuta females. I assume that the trokhos is the same animal, but that’s less certain; see FUNK (2012). KITCHELL (2014) says that Oppian distinguished the spotted and striped hyena, so perhaps the former wasn’t entirely unknown to the ancients.
* KITCHELL (2014) points out that this animal has a bewildering number of identifications. It may be jackal, civet or some sort of viverrid.
* This is the ancient Greek name for the animal. Aristotle does not actually use it, but just speaks of mice with long legs or that walk on their hind legs – clearly the jerboa.
* Aristotle mentions three non-human primates: the kynokephalos, pithēkos and kēbos (excluding the textually dubious khoireopithēkos of HA 503a19). The kynocephalos is certainly the Egyptian baboon, Papio hamadryas, since it has a doglike face and no tail; the pithēkos is said to have a short tail and so is likely the Barbary macaque, Macaca sylvanus. The kēbos is said to have a tail, but the tailed African Cercopithecus are all sub-Saharan, so perhaps it’s a report of the Asian rhesus macaque, Macaca mulatta, from Alexander’s expedition. See KULLMANN (2007) p. 709 and KITCHELL (2014).
* The aspalax could be the naked mole rat, Spalax, of Asia Minor or the Mediterranean mole, Talpa caeca. Both Spalax and T. caeca are blind and have eyes covered in skin, but the latter seems more biogeographically plausible. (T. europea, the common European mole, is found north of the Alps and is disqualified by its small, but externally visible, eyes.) THOMPSON (1910) n. HA 491b30 favours T. caeca simply because it is rather more common than Spalax in the areas that Aristotle knew personally; see KULLMANN (2007) p. 457.
* The onos Indikos is generally thought to be an Indian rhinoceros (OGLE 1882 p. 190, THOMPSON 1910 n. 499b10). LONES (1912) p. 255, looking at its feet, disagrees. Lones is right to say that the rhinoceros has three toes and the onos Indikos one, but the rhino’s central toe is much larger than the others and so could easily be mistaken for a hoof.
* Likely the bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, but Aristotle does not distinguish the several Delphinid spp. found in the Aegean.
* Not mentioned by Aristotle, but now very common in Kalloni. The only references to a flamingo (or what might be one) in ancient Greece are in Aristophanes’ Birds, 273 and Heliodorus.
* Either the glossy ibis, Plegadis falcinellus, found in Greece (Kalloni) or the sacred ibis, Threskiornis aethiopicus, found in Egypt.
* May also refer to a species of tern.
* Athena’s owl. The ancient proverb ‘bringing owls to Athens’ is the Greek equivalent of bringing coals to Newcastle.
* Traditionally identified as the corncrake, Crex crex; but this is dubious and the krex is mentioned by Aristotle as a long-legged waterbird with a short hind toe and a quarrelsome disposition (THOMPSON 1895 p. 103; ARNOTT 2007 p. 120) which does not fit the corncrake well, but does the black-winged stilt.
* Dryokolaptēs is a general name for woodpecker (literally ‘tree-pecker’). Aristotle (HA 593a5, HA 614b10) speaks of at least four kinds of woodpecker as well as the hippos, some of which are easily identified, others not. When he refers to a small woodpecker with reddish speckles he must mean Dendrocopus minor since it is the only small woodpecker found in Greece that answers to the description. When he refers to a larger woodpecker that nests in olive trees he must mean D. medius since it is the only species to do so; interestingly it does so only in Lesbos (Filios Akreotis, pers. comm.). When he refers vaguely to a ‘larger’ species he could mean one of the three large Dendrocopus: the white-backed, D. leucotos, Syrian, D. syriacus or greater spotted, D. major, which are all about the same size (8–10 inches). Hippos may be a copyist’s error for pipō. In addition to these Aristotle refers to a green woodpecker, clearly Picus viridis. See THOMPSON (1895) and ARNOTT (2007).
* Not a valid taxon; now the Sauropsida, which includes birds as a clade of dinosaurs.
* The phykis been variously identified as a goby (Gobius niger), a species of wrasse (e.g. Symphodus ocellatus), THOMPSON 1910 n. HA 567b18, THOMPSON (1947) pp. 276–8, or a blenny (Parablennius sanguinolentus), TIPTON (2006). It’s hard to know since all of these are found in Kalloni or its surrounds and the description is vague and may be confused with other fishes.
* Sometimes confused with Chrysophrys auratus, an Indo-Pacific fish, due to a complicated history of synonomy.
* Contra Aristotle, the frogfish is not a cartilagenous fish.
* Not a valid taxon.
* Aristotle says the sōlēn can’t live if torn off a rock. Elsewhere, however, he says that it is free living and might be able to hear. One of these must be wrong. The sōlēn is traditionally identified as the razor-clam (Solenidae), a sand-burrower, and among the most active and perceptive of all bivalves.
* Literally ‘The thing that looks like a scorpion that comes to be within books.’
* VOULTSIADOU AND VAFIDIS (2007) identify this as the dead man’s fingers sponge, Alcyonium palmatum. That’s plausible too.
* VOULTSIADOU AND VAFIDIS (2007) identify this as the soft coral, Veretillum cynomorium. That’s plausible too.
* NATALI (2013) ch. 3.3.
* See LEROI (2010) for further details.
* GREGORIC and CORCILIUS (2013).
* KING (2001) pp. 126–9.
* JONES et al. (2009).
* For example, MILLAR and ZAMMUTO (1983), DERRICKSON (1992), STARCK and RICKLEFS (1998), BIELBY et al. (2007).
* ‘A scientist always carries a pen’ – M. R. Rose to the author, c. 1986.
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