Bloodless Animals
drawings 2016 - 2018
ink on paper
size variable
For these creatures are bloodless, and so are unable to stand cold and require warmth. Therefore it is that they are found in better condition in summer than at any other season;
[…] For ' they have no blood-vessels nor urinary bladder, nor do they breathe. All, in fact, that it is necessary for them to have is some organ which shall be analogous to a heart ; for in all animals there must be some central and commanding part of the body, to lodge the sensory portion of the soul and the source of life.
[…] Now since bloodless animals do not breathe, they must, it might be argued, have some novel sense not reckoned among the usual five.
Moreover, among the Barbarians, where heads are chopped off with great rapidity, nothing of the kind has ever yet occurred. Why, again, does not the like occur in the case of other animals than man? For that none of them should laugh, when their midriff is wounded, is but what one would expect; for no animal but man ever laughs. So too there is nothing irrational in supposing that the trunk may run forwards to a certain distance after the head has been cut seeing that bloodless animals at any rate can live, and that for a considerable time, after decapitation, as has been set forth and explained in other passages.
All quotes from Aristotle's 'On Parts of Animals'
These, among other drawings, have been published in the book De Animalibus Exsanguibus, 2018