Byzantine interest in animals, whether strange and exotic or domesticated and for hunting, was founded on the Greco-Roman ancient tradition, mainly on the works of Aristotle, as they were preserved with the care of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristophanes of Byzantium, and the treatise De Natura Animalium by the sophist Claudius Aelianus, who had great success because of both its charming writing and its moralizing purpose.

The special position accorded to animals in Late Antiquity is attested both in the context of theological explanations for the creation of the world, especially in Saint Basil the Great’s homilies in the Hexaemeron, and in the context of paradox and exoticism, exemplified in the four books by Timotheus of Gaza under the general title: Περί ζώων τετραπόδων θηρίων των παρ’ Ινδοίς και Άραψι και Αιγυπτίοις και όσα τρέφει Λιβύη, και περί ορνέων ξένων τε και αλλοκότων και όφεων. In the same spirit earlier works such as Fishing and Hunting by Oppian began to be paraphrased during the period in question. These works rarely hint at the wild aspects of nature and the harsh processes of natural selection and survival; animals are generally regarded as heavenly beings, who remind humans of God the Creator. This tradition was followed by the iconoclast emperors, who allowed churches to be decorated only with animals (mostly birds) in addition to geometric and vegetal motifs.

The scholar emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus’ penchant for encyclopaedic knowledge led to the writing of a zoological compendium entitled On the history of the animals on land, in the air and in the sea, half of which has survived. The first two volumes deal with classification methodology and the life and character of viviparous animals, while the other lost two concerned oviparous animals, i.e. fish and birds.

A more practical end was served by the various works on veterinary medicine, particularly on horses and hunting falcons. The major veterinarian of Antiquity was Apsyrtus, who probably lived in the time of Constantine the Great , though his writings were substantially reworked by subsequent generations of doctors into a more concise form, supplemented with incidents from everyday experience. Demetrius Pepagomenus, a physician of the 13^th century wrote by order of the emperor, perhaps Michael VIII Palaeologus a ierakosophion, a big part of which contains recipes for the treatment of diseases of falcons, which were used by the king and the aristocracy in hunting. Pepagomenos also wrote a kynosophion, which covered the topics of selecting, breeding and training dogs.
 
Late Byzantine vernacular literature includes three satirical poems, the Bird Book, the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds and the Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey.  In the first poem, the story unfolds in the heavens: the eagle marries his son and invites all the birds to the wedding feast, where after all the eating and drinking, they start calling each other names: the stork argues with the swan, the pelican with the wild turkey, the bat with the partridge etc. The fighting stops after the eagle threatens to order the hawk and the falcon to attack them. In the second poem, the Tale, the scenery is transferred to the woods, where the lion king together with his close associate the elephant and two ministers - the panther and the leopard - call all the four-footed animals to a meeting to make peace. After some hesitation the meeting begins, but the animals begin to grumble, complain and verbally attack each other; soon the attack becomes real, resulting in an incredible carnage. If in these two works the satire is directed against secular authority and its absurd assemblies, in the third one, the Donkey, the targets are those savants and scholars who exploit ecclesiastical office to amass wealth by illicit means. A donkey runs away from his master and falls into the clutches of a wolf and a fox, who in order to eat him, they invent a lie about going on a journey to the Holy Land, where they can beg and get rich together. They get into a boat, where the wolf is captain, the fox does the steering and the donkey starts rowing. In the middle of the sea the fox has a dream about a storm coming, so they decide to make their confession. The wolf and the fox forgive each other, but when the donkey confesses to eating a lettuce they bring out a law book that says he must be punished for his sin by having his two front legs cut off and his eye pulled out. The donkey realises what evil they are up to, and so he decides to take his revenge. He uses a trick to kick them into the sea, and is given the name Nick (victor) for his great victory.