Odd, anthropomorphized animal illustrations of the 18th century

Bof sez, "Slightly warped illustrations of familiar animals during the Enlightenment by a forerunner of Darwin. The animals are put in contrived settings and their faces are made to look like they have human characteristics"

The plates below are from a 1753 work called 'Collection des Animaux Quadrupèdes' which forms part of an enormous 36-volume series ('Histoire Naturelle') issued over a forty year period by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.

Buffon's Beasts (Thanks, Bof!)

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  More Bibliodyssey. It’s really a great site and Peakay goes to a lot of trouble to find and post interesting images. Well worth a look.

• [VagabondAstronomer]

  My, what a nice illustration of a tarsier in its natural environment; at its estate in southern France. Also, the sloth looks contemplative…

• [jphilby]

  “their faces are made to look like they have human characteristics”

  Maybe the artist was in touch with the animals in a special way that we’re not capable / aware of. “There’s something gained and something lost/ in living every day.”

• [sergeirichard]

  I found the expressions of the animals to be unusually natural rather than unnatural. The modern idiom will try to remove the observer and portray the animal as if it does not know it is being observed, but these depictions show animals reacting naturally to being looked at. They look back.

  It’s odd that one of the few exceptions here is the giraffe. In my experience at least, giraffe gaze back intently at observing humans with their enormous heavy-lashed eyes. Brilliant subjects for photographs.

• [Anonymous]

  Anthropomorphized? How so exactly?!
  The contrived settings are that of any naturalistic illustration…

• [Anonymous]

  anybody else think of the Futurama in the year…

• [lyd]

  I’m distracted by the penis. Everything about that picture leads the eye to the giraffe’s member, which appears to be semi-erect. On the other hand, while it is huge relative to a man it seems a little on the small side for a giraffe. Something is also odd about the angle of it, or is that one of the human characteristics?

  Maybe I’ve just become too accustomed to not seeing animal penises depicted in most media in our culture. *shrug*

• [Bodhipaksa]

  I must be missing something. The faces look a little odd, but I wouldn’t say they were anthropomorphized. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  • [Boondocker]

    I think the same thing. The faces do seem to be a bit off, but I’d put that down to the artist’s abilities or access to references rather than anthropomorphization. The poses, however, sometimes seem to be human-like. They’re weird, anyway.

    @lyd, I didn’t notice the giraffe dong until you pointed it out. I did notice that it’s way too f-ing big, though. It’s like a prehistoric giraffe ancestor.

• [Anonymous]

  Do you know Aloys Zotl?
  http://www.google.com/images?&q=“aloys+zotl”

• [Ambiguity]

  I didn’t find them particularly anthropomorphic, with the possible exception of the monkey, and they kind of are anthropomorphic.

• [Anonymous]

  Proof that the Anonymous conspiracy stretches back for centuries: plate 155, “l’animal anonyme”!!1!

• [Anonymous]

  I wonder if the anthropomorphisization has to do with having to mentally fill in gaps that reference material lacked…

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  Good photos of giraffes for comparison:
  http://www.wildlifearchives.com/index.php?post/2008/06/06/Giraffe

  The animal’s face actually resembles Jar Jar more than a human.

• [bersl2]

  The giraffe and the hippo do appear to be tweaked accidentally towards the anthropomorphic, but I don’t see too much else in the other images.

  “L’animal anonyme” is probably a fennec?

• [kasinator79]

  The giraffe face looks like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.

• [Anonymous]

  There’s a nice book out now that surveys folks such as Buffon: “The Species Seekers” by Richard Coniff. Pretty good and shows how the stage was set for Darwin by 100 years of people looking for new varieties of life.

• [gwailo_joe]

  I dunno. . .not ~so~ odd. I believe I recognize every creature he drew: star-nose mole, lynx (?), fat ferret, sick looking sloth, morose polar bear. . .

  The guy must have seen most of these creatures at some point: he’s no JJ Audubon: but who is?

  Surely no ‘here be the esquilax! with the head of a rabbit! and the body of a. . .” kind of BS.

  Nice work old timer!

• [dr]

  Buffon was an interesting fellow. In my field he is best known for the “needle problem”, which asks the probability that a needle of length L, thrown on a surface ruled with parallel lines M units apart, will cross one of the lines. (Answer when M>L: 2L/MÏ€.) This is one of the seminal problems in geometric probability, which provides a mathematical foundation for stereology (the science of drawing conclusions about an object from cross sections). IIRC he was guillotined alongside Lavoisier in the French Revolution.

  • [Jonathan Badger]

    No, Buffon died in 1788 — so shortly before the revolution.

    • [dr]

      You’re right, it was Georges L. M. Buffon, the Count’s son (and a student of Lamarck) who was beheaded.

• [Clifton]

  Buffon was by far the foremost naturalist of his generation, and a real character.

  There is a story that some of his students attempted to scare him by dressing up in an enormous devil costume put together from various animal skins and parts. The costumed student pranced into his bedroom in the middle of the night and shouted, “Wake up Buffon! I am the Devil, here to devour you!”. Buffon half-opened his eyes, looked at the creation, and said, “That’s impossible! Cloven hooves and horns – you must be an herbivore”, and went back to sleep.

  As to the size of this giraffe, if you look carefully at the human illustrated there, you can see that he is a Pygmy depicted with their traditional hunting bow. I think that makes the relative sizes roughly correct.

• [Anonymous]

  ze jairaffe penais he eez how you say tour-jeed? yait smalleesh…ce la vie…

  (gallic shrug)