 The Book of Animals was edited by Jawad al-‛Imarati (IB-BA). As said above, Avempace begins his book situating it in the context of the theoretical sciences, and then within natural science. The science of the living animals is a species of the natural philosophy (IB-BA: 71). Avempace wonders whether the relationship of its subject, the animal, is similar to the relationship of arithmetic to numbers. Arithmetic is a discipline where the pattern of genus and species applies smoothly: It establishes ten units, and then it combines them and gives them accidents like being odd or a pair, etc. Since numbers are made one of another “ten is made of the five multiplied by the two” and they are “simple forms” which can be continuously incremented (IB-BA: 73) and animals have a completely different existence, Avempace denies the relationship.