I’m fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here’s some good examples: “bug” containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; “fish” containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; “trees” containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and “cats” including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.

And that’s everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      In a similar vein, you have these categories:

      • fourfooted beasts of the earth
      • wild beasts
      • creeping things
      • fowls of the air
  • mrmorganiser@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

  • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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…

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    So it sounds like you could make categories that are

    • location based: sky (flying), jungle
    • climate based: ice/cold, desert
    • task based: tunneling animals, builder animals, nest making animals

    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?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_classes

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      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).

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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?

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 months ago

      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.

  • ChaosCoati@midwest.social
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    2 months ago

    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

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

  • Chris@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters

    And that’s the only word you need, right there.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      “Critter” being a variant of “creature”, which OP also uses. They seem to want something coarse-grained but not that coarse.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    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?

  • DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone
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    2 months ago

    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:

    • canine
    • marsupial
    • mammal
    • primates
    • carnivores
    • vertebrates
    • reptiles
    • birds

    Does that help?

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 months ago

      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.