Main articles: History of zoology (before Darwin), History of zoology (since Darwin)
Branches of biology relevant to zoology
The original branches of zoology established in the late 19th century such as zoo-physics, bionomics and morphography, have largely been subsumed into more broad areas of biology which include studies of mechanisms common to both plants and animals. The biology of animals is covered in several broad areas:
In addition the various taxonomically oriented-disciplines such as mammalogy, herpetology, ornithology study mechanisms that are specific to those groups.
Morphography includes the systematic exploration and tabulation of the facts involved in the recognition of all the recent and extinct kinds of animals and their distribution in space and time. (1) The museum-makers of old days and their modern representatives the curators and describers of zoological collections, (2) early explorers and modern naturalist travellers and writers on zoo-geography, and (3) collectors of fossils and palaeontologists are the chief varieties of zoological workers coming under this heading. Gradually, since the time of Hunter and Cuvier, anatomical study has associated itself with the more superficial morphography until today no one considers a study of animal form of any value which does not include internal structure, histology and embryology in its scope.
The real dawn of zoology after the legendary period of the Middle Ages is connected with the name of an Englishman, Edward Edward Wotton, born at Oxford in 1492, who practised as a physician in London and died in 1555. He published a treatise De differentiis animalium at Paris in 1552. In many respects Wotton was simply an exponent of Aristotle, whose teaching, - with various fanciful additions, constituted the real basis of zoological knowledge throughout the Middle Ages. It was Wotton's merit that he rejected the legendary and fantastic accretions, and returned to Aristotle and the observation of nature.
The most ready means of noting the progress of zoology during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is to compare Aristotle's classificatory conceptions of successive naturalists with those which are to be found in the works of Caldon.
The Zoological Society of San Diego is a not-for-profit organization that operates the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, and the department of Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES).
The Zoological Society of San Diego is the largest zoological membership association in the world, with more than 250,000 member households and 130,000 child memberships, representing more than a half million people.
The Zoological Society of San Diego is a conservation, education, and recreation organization dedicated to the reproduction, protection, and exhibition of animals, plants, and their habitats.
ZOOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION (also known as Zoogeography), the science dealing, in the first place, with the distribution of living animals on the surface of the globe (both land and water), and secondly with that of their forerunners (both in time and in space).
The zoological regions proposed by Dr Sciater were based mainly on the distribution of the perching birds; but in the writings of Dr Wallace and of later authors mammals were very largely taken into consideration, and in later schemes there has been a similarly extensive use of the evidence afforded by mammalian distribution.
Zoological evidence of the latter connexion, by way of Antarctica, is afforded by the earthworms of the family Acanthodrilidae, which are unknown north of the equator, although their occurrence in Madagascar may point to a northern origin.
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