Chapter 3: On small animals

1. _Mus_ (mouse) is a tiny animal; it has a Greek name;[333] but any word that is derived from it becomes Latin. Others say _mures_ are so named because they are born from the _humor_ (moisture) of the earth. For _mus_ is equivalent to _terra_, and from the word comes _humus_ too. The liver of these creatures grows at the full moon, just as certain things that belong to the sea grow, which grow smaller again when the moon lessens.

[333] The Greek is μῦς.

3. _Mustella_ (weasel) is so called, being, as it were, _mus longus_ (long mouse); for _telum_ (missile) is so called from its length. This creature, somewhat wily in its disposition, moves and changes its nest in the house when it is nursing its young. It chases snakes and mice. And there are two sorts of weasels. For one is a creature of the woods, and is of a different size, which the Greeks call ἴκτιδες. The other wanders about in houses. Now they have an erroneous idea who say that the weasel conceives in its mouth, and gives birth through its ear.[334]

[334] A notion found in the _Physiologus_.

4. In Sardinia is a very tiny creature, spider-shaped, which is called _solifuga_, because it shuns the daylight. It is very common in silver mines, secretly creeping along, and it poisons those who unknowingly sit down on it.

8. _Grillus_ (cricket or grasshopper) has its name from the sound of its voice. This creature walks backward, tunnels the earth, makes a loud sound at night. The ant goes hunting it, having itself lowered by a hair into its hole, first blowing the dust out, that it may not hide itself, and thus it is dragged out in the embrace of the ant.

9. _Formica_ (ant) is so called because it carries morsels (_ferat micas_) of grain. Its wisdom is great. For it looks forward to the future and in summer makes ready food to be eaten in winter. At the harvest, too, it picks out wheat and refuses to touch barley. After it rains it always puts out the grain [to dry]. It is said there are ants in Ethiopia of a dog’s shape, and these dig up golden sands with their feet, and they watch them in order that no one may carry them off, and those that do seize them, they pursue till they kill.

10. _Formicoleon_ (ant-lion) has its name for this, that it is a lion of the ants, or at least ant and lion at the same time. For it is a small creature that is very hostile to ants. It hides itself in the sand and kills the ants as they are carrying grains. And it is called lion and ant because it is, as it were, an ant to other animals, but a lion to ants.[335]

[335] This animal is of literary origin and illustrates the
danger of a literary science. For some reason the Septuagint
translators translated the Hebrew word for lion in Job 4:11 by
the word μυρμηκολέων. The commentators later on, in their efforts
to explain the term, evolved a new animal, a compound of ant and
lion. See Lauchert, _Geschichte des Physiologus_, p. 21, and art.
“Physiologus” in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 11th ed.