You have indeed been very helpful, thank you.

And, yes, I admit I have been doing this in a mixed IC and OOC fashion, and it has been bothering me. I've been trying to approach from a IC basis in that everything is based on something that theoretically can be deduced from the animals in game, and I went too far. My apologies. If you want me to, I can drop the tainted creatures not being animals part. This, however presents great difficulties, on the animals are created by a 7th circle god definiton. I can easily place Crow and Raven together, based on Tully's complimentary species notion. I'll have to ask someone to go look at the Earth Creatures and decide what to do with them. I have heard gravediggers being called giant naked mole rats. I can make a plantbeast kind too. But this classification's main basis is the god who created them - and who created thornbeasts and gravediggers? Can we say that Bollikin created Gravediggers cause one upon a time they were mole rats?

Good point bout the ants, but those ones seem to be sentient beings to me? Like the nagaraja, what the Nil are they? Or Shroomies for that matter? I speculated that the Ants were a rogue group of Kephera before, and was shouted down.

And S.A.W., I apologize for my post about your nagaraja theory. I didn't mean to shout it down, I like the idea, it would be cool, but its a bit more of a stretch to say Naga created snakes than Blooredi.

I might not be right, but I see no evidence in the histories that ravens and crows didn't co-exist before or after the Wise Raven turns into Powerful Crow thing. And ravens are technically a sub-species of crow, at least from our Earth classification. Unless I'm missing some special admin-created history (as opposed to player-created which may or may not be correct because of limited knowledge) that's only taught within Glomdoring or something, it's a possibility.

I think we need to see ordinary ravens and crows to be sure. (I don't think the "shadow of a crow" is an ordinary member of species).

I thought they were supposed to be the shadows of a crow flying above the forest. The Shadowdancers catch people's shadows, so I that catching crow shadows in the web thingies they use was a related sort of procedure.

Latest changes:
- Incorporated tainted creatures into kinds. Raven under Songbird, thornbeast under plantbeasts and others under unclassified.
- Dolphins and Sea Wolves under Warmfish, new kind.
- Shuffled kinds around a bit.
- Serpent now says created by unknown god, possibly Blooredi, which it was supposed to say all along, but I somehow missed that it didn't.
- Removed unicorns, as I have been assured that they are in fact a kind of fae.

Some questions:
- Is it plausible that Bollikin created monkey?
- If unicorns are fae, does that mean pegasi are actually angels?
- I was told that bats are actually tainted blue jays. Anyone able to confirm this? If its true should I say they are created by Virivain and altered by taint? Technically can't put them in Songbird, cause they're furry, so I'll have to keep them in thier own kind.

I'm fairly sure they're just supposed to be mystical shadows of Crow, Himself. But I'm not rock-solid on that point.

Raven isn't a Songbird. Viravain even stated that She never allowed Lyreth to give Raven a singing voice.

Right, hence the lyrebird. The only avian classifications I saw, though, were "songbird" and "raptor."

I suppose if you consider the "real world" classification of birds for Crow/Raven then yes, he's a song bird. Corvid species are classified as songbirds.

Raven was one of Viravain's songbirds, but thought the bird so perfect she chose not to let Lyreth give him a singing voice. This hurt Lyreth as it had usually been he that worked with Viravain with her birds. Thus the reason for the lyrebirds...as a gift and a thank you.

I know that they don't sing. You will see I mentioned this when I first proposed the name Songbird. Its a name for the group of birds created by Viravain, not a strict definition. Shadow hawks don't sing either. Its based on the fact that Viravain was known for her many songbirds. I will be glad to change the name if anyone wishes to propose a better one?

Forget DNA. Animals in Lusternia have SCS (seventh circle spirit) infused into them. If we could work out how to detect that, it would help greatly with the grouping of kindreds. Yay, technomagic.

Also remember that terminology does not correlate 100% to real world terminology. So dolphins are fish, warm-blooded fish, but still fish, spiders and scorpions are insects, wombats are rodents, and seagulls are raptors.

The word document I use to edit this classification system is now ten pages long.

I need some help with Glomdoring familiars. Do the familiar bats, snakes and spiders look different to the ones that were found in the forest before the release of ecology?

Latest changes:
- Differentiated between kindreds (all animals made by one god) and kinds, sub-groups of kindreds based on other criteria.
- Animals definition: Animals must be able to move from room to room. So plants that can attack you, but stay in one room cannot be classed as animals.
- Added cheupeds to plantbeasts.
- Moved seagulls to raptors.
- Added nexus world spiders.
- Split bees.
- Changed domesticated to common.
- Added sea insect kind. Grouped all sea animals (warmfish, coldfish, sea insects) into one kindred pending discovery of their creator(s).
- Added more sea animals.
- Added more blasted lands animals.
- Deer in Serenwilde and Glomdoring now called common deer.
- Added some info needed to classify animals currently unclassified.
- Angelbeast & Demonbeast and Faebeast categories added to non-animals. Reclassified some creatures formerly called animals into these categories.
- Corrected some layout errors

While since I updated this. So...

Latest changes: (Mostly from UV)
- Added undervault fungal animals as a new kind, fungalbeasts, related to plantbeasts (14.2), including ascenoids, phycomids and basilions. I am not 100% certain about these, if you know that they don’t look like fungus, or if I have missed anything, let me know. Shroomies are not included, as the Hyfae confirm they are related to them, and are therefore fae, not animals.
- Added spidion, giant centipede and inferno beetle to insects. Though Viravain did tend to make smaller things.
- Added land urchin to Unclassified
- Added tortoise, beaver - and a note to these, hedgehog, mole and others explaining their inclusion despite their absence from the basin.

Just a reminder note that I have tried to use only in-game info as much as possible, but I have used OOC taxonomy to a certain extent. Also, remember that a high percentage of this is speculation, for example there is no direct evidence for much of the animals attributed to Bollikin (though we know he made many furry creatures), or that Volkh created all the canines, or Lorella all the felines, or that Blooredi created other reptiles like turtles. Also, a case could be made for attributing certain reptiles - especially tortoises - to Bollikin, but it is as speculative as attributing them to Blooredi. In the interests of simplification, I will not split reptiles into Blooredi and Bollikin kinds (or split any other kind for that matter) unless further evidence comes to light.

Actually, I thought otherwise.

Look at it this way. Let's say the Spirit of Glom/Seren is their Ethereal counterparts. Taint the Prime, the Ethereal gets Tainted. And look at Maeve. I think she's the collective Spirit of Nature, and when one part of Nature was tainted/wyrded, she was as well. There's a special connection between the Spirits and their animals.

Whether or not ravens still exist, they are in the classification siystem cause they exisited at one time. Same goes for lions, gazelles, and monkeys.

Latest changes:
- Added summonable mounts: brown stag, giant crow, wyrm. Dragon turtles were already listed.
- NOTE animals (tortoise, beaver, hedgehog, mole etc) now identified by superscript 1, note moved to key
- Added ladybird to insects, identified with superscript 2, note added under key.
- Added Bubblebee, bumblebees and crocodiles identified with superscript 3, note added under key
- Properly identified groundhog as a totem animal
- Kennel animals, summonable mounts, and familiars (incuding summonable totems) now colour coded
- Corrected some out of alphabetical order animals