Word for "animals, including humans"?
Commonly, "animals" means "all animals, except humans". So is there a single word for "animals, including humans"?
Particularly, if you had a list of two choices, animal or human, what would you write as the heading?
Context: I'm building an input form for game designers to fill out about things you can encounter in a fantasy world. And one property of an encounter is whether it's an encounter with humans, animals, and possibly more categories to be determined later (e.g. spirits, monsters, undead?).
Solution 1:
This is a tricky one because people differ in what they consider to be an animal. Not only that but a biological dictionary would give a different answer from an everyday dictionary.
Some would say that humans are distinct from animals. (creationists for example)
Some would say that humans are animals. (evolutionists for example)
Some don't include lizards as animals. Others don't include insects.
It depends whether you want a technical answer or not.
Some suggestions
Technical
chordates
animalia
eukaryotes
Non-technical
beings
creatures
etc.
Solution 2:
Q: Is there a single word for "animals, including humans"?
A: Humans are included in the Kingdom Animalia
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). All animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently, at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance. (Wikipedia, Animalia)
Domain Eukarya - Kingdom Animalia - Phylum Chordata - Subphylum Vertebrata - Class Mammalia - Order Primates - Family Hominidae - Genus Homo - Species Sapien
Order Primates
The primates belong to the class Mammalia. They show all of the normal features of mammals, including hair and mammary glands for nursing the young. They are endothermic, have vertebrae and a skeleton, and are segmented deuterosomes, with a coelom made from an outgrowth of the digestive tract. Primates are eutherians, meaning that they have a placenta that provides a more intimate relationship between mother and child while the mother nurses the child. Eutherians are also the mammals with the longest relationship between mother and young. The above features make the animals of the order Primates also eutherians, mammals, vertebrates, and chordates.
There are 13 families in the order Primates.
Family Hominidae - humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans
http://classic.sidwell.edu/us/science/vlb5/Labs/Classification_Lab/Eukarya/Animalia/Chordata/Vertebrata/Mammalia/Primates/)
Q: [I]f you had a list of two choices, animal or human, what would you write as the heading?
A: If I had to choose between Human or Animal, my choice would be Animal.
(My language choice is, admittedly, informed by philosophical, ethical and political concerns. I think that maintaining the conceit [embedded in our common language] that the distinctions which differentiate Homo sapiens from the other members of Hominidae are sufficient to justify an exclusive categorization, has lately been ... counterproductive.)
Supplemental: In the context of the categories involved with game development, perhaps Human, Animal, and Life-form or Entity (mortal and non-mortal).
Solution 3:
In your case of a fantasy game, a common word for this category might be 'mortals'.
Solution 4:
Humans are a variety of living beings called mammals. This puts us in the same category as mice, dogs, cats, cows, pigs, sheep, monkeys, and any other species that:
is warm-blooded
breathes air
gives birth to live young
suckles their young
(mammal comes from the same root word as mammary, which means a female breast capable of producing milk).
This leaves out bugs, spiders, snakes & lizards (reptiles), frogs, toads (amphibians), birds, fish, and other sea creatures (except dolphins and whales, which are mammals).
If you want to include all animals along with humans, you could say living beings (most people would not think this includes plants).
If you want to emphasize that humans can think and feel, you could group them only with those animals we consider to have some capacity for thinking and feeling, by saying sentient beings. (There will be some dispute as to which species this includes.)
Solution 5:
I'd personally just use "Fauna". The phrase "Flora & Fauna" is commonly used terminology to refer to "Plants & Animals".