TPI am sure everyone has heard what a #genius #LeonardoDaVinci is, but I had no idea that he wrote about #AnimalRights, writing truly positive words for the animals.
As I see him classified as a #vegetarian, I discarded peering into his life further as I wanted to focus on #vegans that followed a #VeganForTheAnimals philosophy. As you can imagine, that's a really short list, as it basically excluded anyone prior to #DonaldWatson and #DorothyMorgan's coinage of #vegan in 1944.
However, there were indeed people prior to 1944 that cared about animals. And da Vinci was one of them!
I found a list of his quotes here, kindly compiled by Emily Moran Barwick for Bite Size Vegan:
https://bitesizevegan.org/was-leonardo-da-vinci-vegan-the-history-of-veganism-spotlight/
A YouTube video covers the content as well:
Based on what you have read, how would you classify da Vinci?
I personally (with my heavy #veganism bias) would classify him as vegetarian, as I believe he would have still used animal products, though that may have been due to his limited availability of alternatives (vegan paintbrushes and paints probably were hard to come by 500 years ago). I haven't found evidence that he explicitly ate cheese or drank cows milk, or had eggs, (happy to be corrected on this).
However I or anyone classifies him though, it is fair to say that based on the written record (and assuming a faithful translation from Italian to English) his words speak of a kindness and respect to animals, centuries ahead of his time. 🌱
