Trying to come up with a list of vague words for different "kinds of animals". Help? - eviltoast

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.

  • 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.