Creature keywording for animals.

[Randyman]

Hello.
Me and a few friends reflected over the fact that some animals has their group name as a catagory keyword (which in most cases is much broader) and others have their species.

For example Firewood fox and timber wolf are keyworded canine and Feral Bobcat, Makunda, and Cervere are not keyworded feline but cat. Also Sosruko has none.

Personally it looks cleaner and better if one used the broader names but if cards are in design that should affect a certain animal from the same broad group but not another in the same name group I can understand the mechanic part of it.

There are a few more examples like the grizzly is a bear and Galador is cervine (CoK).

I can't imagin that one would wanna "fix" this as there are so many cards affected, just a reflection...

[ringkichard]

And Giant Wolf Spider isn't an animal. 

[Wiz-Pig]

And Giant Wolf Spider isn't an animal. 

For some reason it is typical for people to categorize arthropods, especially insects and arachnids separately from other animals. To be fair, from a scientific perspective the knights and archers, and many of the other humanoid cards would also be animals, but then that's just drawing too wide a category. My feeling is that non-humanoid mammals and birds are pretty much the only ones that are going to make the 'animal' cut for the game. It is curious that the Emerald Tegu was assigned animal because the other two reptile creatures did not get that label (stonegaze basilisk which got reptile and lizard and darkfenne hydra which just got serpent).

[piousflea]

The "animal" keyword really seems to mean "creatures that can be turned into a BM Pet". They are animals that are sufficiently warm and fuzzy to fall in love with a Mage, as opposed to a heartless monster like the spider or hydra.

[ringkichard]

Of course, the Beastmaster him(her)self is the real heartless monster. It's not uncommon for me to go through three or more pets in the course of a couple hours!