Animalia
An illustrated compendium of the animals we live with
Realm · Open
Animalia
An illustrated compendium of the animals we live with
Dogs and cats, their wild relatives, and the breeds people have shaped — the first realm of QuanShu.
Every encyclopedia begins somewhere. Ours begins at the front door. This realm follows the dog and the cat back to their wild ancestors, then outward into the astonishing variety of breeds that people have bred, named, and loved. Each entry is written to be read in one sitting — and cited so that it can be checked.
- Entries
- 10
- Categories
- 8
- Status
- Open
In this realm
The shape of the subject
Browse by category
Category
Animals
The animal kingdom, and the creatures closest to us.
Subcategory
Mammals
Warm-blooded vertebrates with hair, milk, and remarkable minds.
Subcategory
Canidae
Dogs, wolves, foxes, and their kin.
Subcategory
Felidae
The cat family, from the household tabby to the tiger.
Subcategory
Dog breeds
Centuries of selection, written into coat, bone, and temperament.
Subcategory
Cat breeds
The registered varieties of the domestic cat.
Subcategory
Behavior
How animals sense, learn, communicate, and live together.
Subcategory
Domestication
The long, unfinished partnership between people and other species.
Selected entries
Start reading
Canidae
Dog
The dog is the domesticated descendant of the gray wolf — the oldest companion species, reshaped by millennia of human selection into hundreds of breeds and spread across every human landscape.
Felidae
Cat
The domestic cat is a small, solitary hunter that chose the human settlement — and then the human sofa. Its story is one of the least intentional domestications in history.
Canidae
Gray Wolf
The gray wolf is the largest wild canid, a pack-hunting carnivore of the Northern Hemisphere whose range and reputation have been reshaped by people.
Felidae
African Wildcat
The African wildcat is the small, tabby-striped ancestor of the domestic cat, widespread across Africa and southwestern Asia but increasingly diluted by hybridization.
Dog breeds
Labrador Retriever
The Labrador Retriever is a medium-to-large gundog from the North Atlantic, bred to retrieve in cold water and ranked among the most popular breeds in the United States and Britain.
Dog breeds
German Shepherd Dog
The German Shepherd Dog is a large herding breed from Germany, built for work and prized for its trainability — and it needs a job to stay sound in body and mind.
Dog breeds
Border Collie
The Border Collie is the sheepdog of the Anglo-Scottish border: an intense, biddable herder whose working and show lines have diverged, and whose exercise and health needs are often underestimated.
Cat breeds
Maine Coon
The Maine Coon is New England's native longhair: a large, slow-maturing cat with a shaggy coat, a sociable temperament, and inherited heart and joint conditions that breeders screen for.
Cat breeds
Siamese cat
A pointed, blue-eyed cat from Thailand, bred to a long wedge and a loud voice — and shaped by a small set of inherited risks that breeders now test for.
Cat breeds
Persian cat
The long-coated, flat-faced cat of the drawing room: an old breed whose extreme type has put breathing, eyes and breeding at the center of a modern welfare debate.
A note on the set
This realm opens with the animals closest to us, but it is a living realm: entries are added, corrected, and re-cited. New realms are announced only when they are ready to read.