The inheritance of looks.

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. 

The Pigeon: 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.