3 ideas
Every animal eats a smaller or weaker creature and is in turn eaten by a larger or stronger one, forming a chain of consumption that runs from gnats to lions. Al-Jahiz presents the chain as a closed order: no creature is exempt from being prey, and the means of survival for one is the death of another.
Al-Jahiz argues that climate, food, water and terrain alter the bodies, colours and temperaments of animals, and of people too, so that creatures of the same kind differ by where they live. Local conditions are a real cause of variation, not incidental background, and a creature can only be understood alongside its habitat.
Al-Jahiz holds that the gnat, the ant and the dung beetle reveal divine wisdom as much as the elephant, because each is fitted precisely to its way of life. Close observation of despised or trivial animals is therefore an act of reasoning about providence, and dismissing them as unworthy of study is an intellectual failure.