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Octopi aren’t fish.
Do you mean collective nouns ?
Or just “generic groups”, as in animal, plant, rock, fungi, lichen ?
Maybe group words that aren’t as specific as collective nouns and not as generic as groups:
Does that help?
My justification for calling octopi fish is that I asked a pre-schooler what kind of animal an octopus was, and he told me it was a fish because it breathes water and swims in the ocean. That said, maybe cephalopods could be their own type because they tend to be solitary, which would be thematically relevant to why they wouldn't combo off each other.
You want broad sweeping categories? Maybe categorize by behaviour?
Crawlers Slitherers Swimmers Flyers Stationary creatures Sunlight eaters Carnivores Plant eaters Omnivores
I think decide what your groups actually are first, then label. So a fish in this list would be swimming carnivore.
Well this was a fun game to play with the family. Here's some words we came up with:
Algae
Amphibians
Animals
Annual
Aquatic
Baby
Bacteria
Beasts
Bipedal
Birds
Blossoms
Buggers
Bugs
Bushes
Cacti
Carnivores
Cats
Crabs
Crawler
Creatures
Creepy-crawly
Critters
Critters
Dogs
Dolphins
Domesticated
Estuarine
Fauna
Fern
Fish
Flora
Flutterer
Flyer
Foliage
Forager
Fowl
Fungi
Furballs
Game
Grasses
Herbivores
Herbs
Insects
Invertebrates
Larvae
Lentic
Lichens
Lizards
Lotic
Mammals
Marine
Microbes
Mini-beasts
Molds
Moss
Moths
Nestling
Old
Omnivores
Pelagic
Perennial
Pests
Plankton
Pond dwellers
Pray
Predators
Primates
Protozoa
Prowler
Quadrapedal
Reptiles
Reptiles
Riverine
Rodents
Scavengers
Seedlings
Serpents
Sharks
Shelled
Shrubs
Spores
Swimmer
Symbiotes
Trees
Tropical
Varmint
Vertebrates
Vines
Viri
Weeds
Wetland
Whales
Wild
Worms
Yeasts
Young
xerophytic
Hope that was helpful.
Canid and canine generally mean any of the dog-like animals: domestic dogs, wolves, fox, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, wild dogs
Parrot applies to members of the Psittacine family: parrots, macaws, parakeets, cockatiels, cockatoos, parrotlets, lorikeets
Herps and herpetofauna are used to collectively refer to amphibians and reptiles: frogs, salamanders, newts, lizards, turtles, snakes
Bear means all actual bear species but is also often used in reference to pandas and koalas (just don’t say it in front of my scientifically accurate kid)
Waterfowl is ducks, geese, swans
Depending on why or how you’re using categories, you can also group by characteristics: Do they have fur, feathers, or scales Do they lay eggs or give birth Are they predator or prey Do they eat meat, plants, fruit, pollen, or some combination
I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters
And that's the only word you need, right there.
"Critter" being a variant of "creature", which OP also uses. They seem to want something coarse-grained but not that coarse.
Reading the comments on this makes me realize how often we think about animals, considering we apparently have thousands of different ways to categorize them, even if it's more by vibe than anything else...
I categorize all things by vibe
Keeps shit mellow
But how do you categorize vibes?
Groovily
Far out, man, far out.
And here we thought baraminology would never be useful for anything.
Haven't seen that term in ages. Thanks for reminding me of terrible YEC arguments. The Flerfs have been stealing all the attention (although there is definitely overlap).
The biggest difficulty with answering this question I think is that I don't know how broad the categories should be. Do you have an estimate of how many categories you're looking for?
Honestly, my main motivation here is to pick all of your brains to see how many different category-words there are, then change my game plan to react to the natural language words. For example, if we didn't have words more specific than Animal, Plant, Fungus, and Bacteria, I could slap a four-color mana system on that and call it a day. Obviously that's not the case, but in the unlikely system that I can describe all of creation using only 20ish names i could imitate Cardfight Vanguard and make them into a sort of clan system and do lots of clan-exclusive comboing off each other. Any more than that, I imitate Magic instead: certain cards care a whole lot about types (e.g.: Kavu you control are red in addition to their other colors, Red creatures you control have haste) while others pay more attention to subtypes (e.g.: Tap 12 Allies you control: draw a card) and other just don't discriminate, affecting everything or nothing.
So it sounds like you could make categories that are
You could also start from a list of animals and then categorize them afterwards based on what you have. As for a list, maybe by biological families or classes?
Or attribute based: furry, can fly, two eyes, scales, etc.
Fish: anything that swims
Bird: anything that flies
Floof: anything small and furry
Behemoth: anything large and stompy
Leviathan: anything large and swimmy
Beast: anything big and bitey or not otherwise categorized
In a similar vein, you have these categories:
Bats -- the quintessential floof bird.
Beaver -- halfway between beast and floof
Floofbird, floofbeast! Love it. I think we're done here.
That's not too far off from how Germans name animals.
Bat: flutter mouse Skunk: stink beast Tortoise: shield toad Raccoon: wash bear Porcupine: spike pig Turkey: threatening chicken
There's so many more! Go look some up for a laugh.
The most interesting part is their base set of animals
Toads, bears, pigs and fish. What else do you need? 😂
In Germany? Nothing, they're all the same in the wurst anyway
IDK any list like that. Why not make the list in your own language and see how much can translate to English without distorting the meaning too much?
