I figured someone might find this useful. I never intended my conworld to be a speculative biology project, but part of me is always striving to put everything in its place. So I usually think of random critters first and only later try to cram them into some sort of taxon.

The idea is I write up a note explaining what the critter is, then place the note on the canvas where I think it should go. Yinrih and tree dwellers are in the same genus (vulpithecus) so they’re grouped together. The Bobtailed Hob is more distantly related, so it goes in a vulpithecoid group above the vulpithecins. Vulpithecoids are tetrapods, which on Yih evolved from six-limbed hexapods.

Other hexapods include Wormcows (common livestock animals) and (tentatively) forest flyers (the most common pet kept by yinrih). Hexapods are terrestrial animals that evolved from fish-like aquatic vertebrates. The Lapras-like shell-fish I posted about earlier is one such aquatic vertebrate.

Vertebrates emerged from soft-bodied invertebrates, which include the nannerpus I just posted about. Hard-bodied invertebrates are a sister taxon to the soft-bodied invertebrates, and include arthropod-like animals like fireflies.

All of these are animals. There are also plants (multicellular autotrophs) and fungi (multicellular heterotrophs that are not animals), and so on and on it goes.