This dissertation examines conceptions of animal exemplarity in a selection of German-language literature, philosophy, and science around 1800. Chapter one investigates the relationship Gotthold Ephraim Lessing draws between examples and animals in Fabeln. Drey Bücher. Nebst Abhandlungen mit dieser Dichtungsart verwandten Inhalts (1759). Chapter two explores the paradigm of bad examples in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s adaptation of the beast-epic, Reineke Fuchs (1793). And chapter three examines the role of exemplary animals in Goethe’s scientific work on morphology and comparative anatomy and juxtaposes it to Immanuel Kant’s treatment of animal examples in Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). Lessing portrays the exemplary animals of fables as a way to enlist sensuous intuition on behalf of rational morality but cannot reconcile their instrumental function with their vivid appeal. The animals in Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs make for ambivalent, if not bad, moral examples, which allows the poem to reflect on the expectation that examples will insulate us from error and responsibility. In Goethe’s morphological writings, however, he pursues a concept of animal exemplarity that could orient scientific understanding of natural organisms and overcome the limits Kant appears to set on human knowledge of living nature. The juxtaposition of these three authors’ views on animals and examples yields a dynamic picture of the changing epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic concerns attendant on animal life during this period and argues for renewed attention to animals examples in contemporary animal studies.