 The surviving corpus of Aristotle derives from medieval manuscripts based on a 1st century BCE edition. There were no commentaries on the biological works written until they were collectively translated into Arabic. The first appearance of Aristotle’s biological writings in the West are Latin translations, by Michael Scot, of an Arabic edition, which forms the basis of Albertus Magnus’ De animalibus. In the 13th century, William of Moerbeke produced a Latin translation directly from the Greek. The first printed editions and translations date to the late 15th century, the most widely circulated being that of Theodorus Gaza. In addition to the three works traditionally referred to as History of Animals (HA), Parts of Animals (PA) and Generation of Animals (GA), there are a number of briefer ‘essays’ on more specialized topics: On animal motion, On animal locomotion, On respiration, On life and death, On youth and old age, On length and shortness of life, On sleeping and waking, On the senses and their objects (the last six being included in the so-called Parva naturalia). Whether one should consider De Anima (On the soul) part of this project or not is a difficult question. What is certainly clear, however, is that there are important connections between the theoretical approach to the relationship between body and soul defended in that work and the distinctive way that Aristotle approaches the investigation of animals.