How Should You Use Our Animal Analogies?
There are many ways you can use them. If you’re teaching biology, use them to help students remember important facts about animal characteristics, species identification, geographic location of these animals, and other important details. Use them to devise tests or quizzes, for instance, by leaving the second animal in the analogy blank and asking your students to fill in the blanks. You can also ask your students to come up with their own animal analogies using these as examples. For example, a metaphor used by many is “lizard brain.” This is a shoutout to when we as humans feel scared, stressed out, or react like reptiles. Reptiles don’t think in the same way people do, however, they have good reflexes for protecting themselves. When someone uses the term “lizard brain”, it means that a part of your brain is activated from before humans evolved. It can be highlighted when people act erratically to danger or say things we later regret. With that said, you can also use them to teach the concept of analogies to language learners. Grasping concepts like analogies is key to a deeper understanding of language. Using our list of animals makes it fun and easy. Your students will understand analogies, including animal analogies, much better with our extensive list of the world’s fascinating animals.
What Are Animal Analogies?
Do you know what an analogy is? It’s a figure of speech that compares two separate beings based on characteristics that both have. For instance, if you say, “Glove is to hand as shoe is to foot,” you’re showing that a glove and a sock have the same relationship to those body parts, namely, both are coverings. The hand and the foot are different objects, but they share the fact that they both use coverings. Those coverings are different, and that difference creates the analogy. Using one of our animal analogies, if we say, “Den is to fox as nest is to bird,” we’re showing that both foxes and birds need shelter. The fox’s shelter is a den, and the bird’s shelter is a nest. This animal analogy shows that both animals share a need for shelter, but each animal needs a different kind. The meaning of the analogy is the concept of shelter.
Are Animal Analogies the Same as Animal Metaphors?
No, they’re not the same thing. A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things that would otherwise be unrelated except for one shared characteristic. For instance, when you say, “That guy is as big as a house,” you’re using metaphor. Everyone knows houses are large. Describing someone that way means they are larger than the average person. You can also use metaphor without saying “as big as,” for instance, you could simply say, “That guy is a house.” The meaning of your metaphor is still clear. You’re not really saying the person is a house, but you are saying that they’re exceptionally tall or large. Like animal analogies, animal metaphors are quite common. Some animal metaphors you may have heard include, “She’s as brave as a lion,” or “They’re as playful as monkeys.” You may have even used expressions like “stubborn as a mule” or “strong as an ox.” These are all metaphors that compare a person to an animal because of a shared characteristic.
So How Is an Analogy Different?
An analogy is more complex than a simple metaphor. In an analogy, including animal analogies, you create a relationship between two different things and show a relationship between them based on logic and reason.
Your 37 Animal Analogies
Bonus: A Few Fun Metaphors
While these may not help you ace your biology test, we thought we’d share some fun, popular animal metaphors:
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