ZOOGRAPHY

 The Zoography is the branch of zoology devoted to describing animal species . Zoology, for its part, is the science specialized in the study of animals.

With these ideas clear, we can understand that zoography is part of the science that focuses on the analysis of animals, mainly on the detailed description of the different species or isolated specimens.

When describing an animal species , zoography seeks to provide as much information as possible about its characteristics. In this way, it not only informs about the physical peculiarities of the specimens, but also details data on their behaviors, their relationship with other species, their adaptation to the habitat, etc.

An example of the application of zoography could be the following: “The dog is a mammalian animal with four legs. It belongs to the canine family and is characterized by the great development of the sense of smell and hearing. The usual thing is that the dog has a body covered with hair, although there are breeds that do not share this characteristic ” .

The work of zographers can be very important as far as the relationship of the human being with the rest of the species is concerned, but there is also a very thin line that connects it with animal abuse, since many of the investigations of this branch of zoology have required and require the forced isolation of living beings and the performance of various unfair practices.

Zoography can also appear in colloquial language , although without scientific details, but oriented towards a description of what anyone can see through sight: “My cat is white and furry, measures about fifty centimeters and has a very long ” .

There are writers who, from fiction , also developed content that can be related to zoography. This is the case of Juan Ramón Jiménez, who described the Platero donkey as “small, hairy, soft”.

In the same way, the first attempts of the human being to study and describe the members of the animal kingdom do not stand out for their scientific rigor ; On the contrary, they were the result of observation and of establishing relationships between the behavior and physical characteristics of different individuals belonging to the same species.

Animals probably aroused great interest in man from their first encounter , as there is innumerable evidence of this fascination in the form of centuries-old cave paintings and murals. The fact that so many gods have been represented with looking animal in the most ancient civilizations is another difficult test to ignore.

Zoography is also known by the name of descriptive zoology, and today it is quite advanced, since it has covered a large number of different species, although science still has a lot of work ahead of it. It was not until the Renaissance that it acquired a scientific character , and it was then that many of Aristotle's theories were discarded, along with certain concepts more typical of fantasy than of strict observation.

While general zoology focuses on the study of all the common and generic characteristics that animals have, before embarking on a classification based on methods and principles that allow a well-defined order and hierarchy to be achieved, zoography requires a prior analysis from various points of view, such as functional, histological and embryological.

Before proceeding to the own studies of zoography, it is necessary to carry out a systematic classification, through which scientists focus on the similarities and differences that they notice between individuals of the same species and then place it in a group in a way logical and systematic.