Another beast from the bestiary

Today, another dip into Aberdeen University's Bestiary written and illuminated in England around the year 1200 AD.
A Bestiary is a collection of short descriptions about all sorts of animals, real and imaginary, birds and even rocks, accompanied by a moralising explanation. Although it deals with the natural world it was never meant to be a scientific text and should not be read as such. Some observations may be quite accurate but they are given the same weight as totally fabulous accounts. This what the Bestiary has to say about the pigeon. You might expect a discourse on peace and love but the reality is rather more interesting!  

The Pigeon. There are three kinds of horse. One is the noble war-horse, capable of carrying heavy weights; the second is the everyday kind, used for drawing loads but unsuitable for riding. The third is born from a combination of different species, and is also called bigener, hybrid, because it is born of mixed stock, like a mule. 
Indeed human activity has brought together a variety of animals to mate. And from this adulterous interbreeding man has produced a new species, just as Jacob obtained animals of the same colour - also against nature. For his ewes conceived lambs of the same colour as the rams which mounted them, seeing them reflected in water. Finally it is said that the same thing happens with herds of mares, that men put noble stallions in view of those which are about to conceive, so that they can conceive and create offspring in the stallions' image. Pigeon fanciers place images of the most beautiful pigeons in places where they flock, to catch the birds' eye, so that they may produce babies which look like them. It is for this reason that people order pregnant women not to look at animals with very ugly countenances, such as dog-headed apes or apes, lest they should bear children who look like the things they have seen. For it is said to be the nature of women that they produce as offspring whatever they see or imagine at the height of their ardour as they conceive; animals, indeed, when they are mating, transmit inwardly the forms they see outwardly and, imbued with these images, take on their appearance as their own.