Z

The major branch of *biology dealing with the study of animals. The roots of the science extend back to observations made by *Aristotle, reported in Historia animalium, De partibus animalium, and De generatione animalium. The first deals with the diversity of animal life, the second with morphology, and the third with reproduction. The active nature of animals ensured that zoology would be more glamorous than its immediate counterpart within the larger science, *botany, but this did not inhibit the tendency of the speculative imagination to design creatures far more bizarre and aggressive than those provided by nature. This propensity is not merely manifest in fiction; it is clearly evident in the rich mythology of dragons, the embellishment of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia (first century a.d.), mediaeval bestiaries, and the *pseudoscientific extensions of cryptozoology that deal with *Fortean accounts of fabulous creatures.