Animalité et imperfection des sens au xiii^e siècle, des bestiaires à Albert le Grand

Animals recognised as champions of one sense or another had a starring role in medieval bestiaries. Does this animal superiority contradict the idea that the human is the most perfect of creatures? This paradox is formulated and resolved in Albert the Great’s treatise De Animalibus, whereas the comparison between the animal and the human senses sustains many of the zoological reflections of the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century.