 Interestingly enough, Theophrastus’ comments on animal behaviour have often raised the question of how far he considered it to be analogous to human behaviour. By showing, in particular, an interest in intelligent animal behaviour, he seems to have somewhat effaced the line between humans and other animals. According to Porphyry’s treatise On Abstinence From Eating Meat, Theophrastus stressed a natural relationship (oikeiotēs) among all human beings, but also between human beings and other animals. This relationship, however, is not to be confused with Stoic oikeiōsis; for the latter starts as an innate and self-regarding impulse of newly born creatures that is modified over time, so that an individual comes to realize the priority of virtue over soundness of body, whereas Theophrastus’ notion designates a kinship based on common bodily and psychical characteristics (see Brink 1956; Long 1998). So, in the case of the relationship between humans and other animals, Theophrastus claimed that humans are akin to animals because they are made of the same skin, flesh and fluids, and most importantly because their souls are no different in desires, angry impulses, reasonings and above all sensations (fr. 531 FHS&amp;G). But if the mention here of reasonings or calculations (logismoi) is pressed, then Theophrastus can be understood as seriously deviating from Aristotle, who stated in his treatise On the soul (3.10 433a12) that animals did not have the ability of reasoning. Also, at the beginning of his treatise Enquiry into Plants, Theophrastus stated that animals differ from plants because they act (prattein). But assuming that Theophrastus shared Aristotle’s requisite for action (praxis), namely that in acting one exercises one’s reason, his ascription of actions to animals implies that they have a reasoning faculty of at least some sort, though it is not entirely clear how he supported this claim.