The bestiary of the linguists and the upper limite of the true animal
Abstract
Animal, in accordance to it's deepest usual meaning in french, is focused on four legged beings, made of flesh and blood as we are, with hair and voices. This term may be extended to not as true animals such as birds, lizards, tortoises, but this wider meaning does not descend to worms and fishes. That the lower limit is fluctuating does not preclude some animals to be truer than others. There is also an upper limit that the present work tries to high-light. Firstly, it shows that linguists often involve horses in their examples, due to our proximity with this being, which brings it to escape it's animal condition, even to as far as accrediting it with a language potential. Secondly, it goes on to show that linguists, when asked to make a list of animals, tend not to include horse, for the very same reason of proximity with ourselves. This reveals that horse is at the upper limit of the true animal. Hellenists, impregnated as they are with the centaur's nature by their knowledge of Greek mythology and culture, go even further by grouping the horse with mankind rather than with animals.
Related
- Snails show their true colours: rate of evolutionary divergence in the shell colour polymorphism of Cepaea nemoralis
- The true scale of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps
- Methods for measuring stratigraphic attitude and true thickness based on high-precision 3D real-scene models: A case study of the early Silurian Chongqing Lagerstätte Section, China
- The impact of meditation on cognitive flexibility: A critical review and the case for investigating True Self Meditation
- TRUEDA overturns replicated, decontaminated low-biomass disease-microbe associations and clinical decisions, recovers true pathogens and outperforms every decontamination method
BibTeX
@article{poplin2026bestiary,
title = {{The bestiary of the linguists and the upper limite of the true animal}},
author = {François Poplin},
journal = {Anthropozoologica},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05751688v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The bestiary of the linguists and the upper limite of the true animal
AU - François Poplin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
JO - Anthropozoologica
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05751688v1
AB - Animal, in accordance to it's deepest usual meaning in french, is focused on four legged beings, made of flesh and blood as we are, with hair and voices. This term may be extended to not as true animals such as birds, lizards, tortoises, but this wider meaning does not descend to worms and fishes. That the lower limit is fluctuating does not preclude some animals to be truer than others. There is also an upper limit that the present work tries to high-light. Firstly, it shows that linguists often involve horses in their examples, due to our proximity with this being, which brings it to escape it's animal condition, even to as far as accrediting it with a language potential. Secondly, it goes on to show that linguists, when asked to make a list of animals, tend not to include horse, for the very same reason of proximity with ourselves. This reveals that horse is at the upper limit of the true animal. Hellenists, impregnated as they are with the centaur's nature by their knowledge of Greek mythology and culture, go even further by grouping the horse with mankind rather than with animals.
SN - 0761-3032
ER -