# 12 groups of animals

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/12-groups-of-animals/199366>\
**Category:** random\
**Created:** [September 1, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/12-groups-of-animals/199366 "2006-09-01T18:01:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anon43637241](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@anon43637241](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/anon43637241)\
**Post date:** [September 1, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/12-groups-of-animals/199366/1 "2006-09-01T18:01:02Z")

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Did you know, that a long time ago the chinese people didn’t use a logic system for categorizing their animals (like mammals, reptile etc.)?

Instead they had 12 groups, categorized after the importance of the animal:

_(Translated from danish)_

1: The emperors animals  
2: Embalmed animals (I don’t even know if that’s an english word, but it’s like mummies).  
3: Domestic animals (pets).  
4: Domestic pigs.  
5: Mermaids.  
6: Legendary creatures.  
7: Dogs, who weren’t owned by anyone.  
8: Animals who moved as if they were mad.  
9: Uncountable animals (I don’t know if that is the right word to be used, but I cant think of anything better)  
10: Animals, who are drawn with a thin brush made of hair from a camel.  
11: Animals, who had recently avoided danger.  
12: Animals, who looked like flies from far away.

Stupid, huh?