 The beginning of the Antoniana is an extensive discussion aimed at demonstrating that animals do not have the faculty of sensory perception. His argument is easy to sum up: if animals had the ability to perceive objects and were able to behave in one way or another depending on this perception, then we should have to grant them not only sensory perception, but also the faculty of reasoning. What is more, it would be necessary to conclude that they have an indivisible and immortal soul, as humans do. Pereira himself recognized that such a thesis could seem surprising, since it was generally accepted that beasts had been endowed with the faculty of sensory perception (AM: I.191). The author was right to believe that to his contemporary reader a thesis that denies the existence of sensory perception in beasts might seem not only a striking novelty, but also something which contradicted common experience and the principles of Aristotelian philosophy. Without going into the controversial question of whether Aristotle accepted or not the existence of certain traces of intelligence in animal behavior (see Newmyer 2011: 6–10), there is no doubt that he attributed the sensitive faculty, in different degrees of complexity, to animals. In the De Anima, without going any further, Aristotle clearly said: 