Animal

Some monsters are classified as animals, identified by the is_animal() macro and ultimately defined by the M1_ANIMAL flag in monst.c. It has the following implications:

• Animals with an item-stealing attack will attempt to take an object and flee on foot rather than teleport if successful, as nymphs do. They cannot steal cursed objects stuck to you, rings worn under a curse-welded weapon or armor that takes more than one move to take off. The same caveats apply to theft by muggers in variants.
• Animals with an engulfing attack can remove you from a steed, even if your saddle is cursed. They are affected by a chameleon, doppelganger, nurse, wraith, or cockatrice corpse dropped or thrown inside of them. They can be forced to release you by spinning a web, ringing the Bell of Opening or using opening magic inside of them.
• Animals can't use (and don't generate with) armor, offensive, defensive, miscellaneous items or tins, and will not deliberately use traps or stairs to flee.
• Chameleons usually imitate animals.

The animals are:

• all acdfmpqrstwxzBJRSY, excluding werecreatures in either of their forms
• u ponies, horses and warhorses (but not unicorns)
• E stalkers
• H ettins and H minotaurs
• all ​: lizards except salamanders
• all ​; sea monsters except jellyfish

Body parts

Animal also refers to the grouping of body parts for the forms of many animals. It affects the messages referring to the appropriate body parts as follows:

Bodypart	Description
arm	forelimb
eye	eye
face	face
finger	foreclaw
fingertip	claw tip
foot	rear limb
hand	foreclaw (paw for dfY)
handed	clawed (pawed for dfY)
head	head
leg	rear limb
light headed	light headed
neck	neck
spine	spine
toe	rear claw tip
hair	fur
blood	blood
lung	lung
nose	nose (trunk for mumakil and mastodons)
stomach	stomach