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.
Anthropozoologica
37 - Pages 39-64