UnicoDreamWhat holds this group together is how it is read. Animals are almost never interpreted by appearance — it is their behaviour that carries the meaning. Knowing how an animal actually behaves is usually enough to predict the direction of its reading.
The pages below cover the animals themselves along with the events and omens involving them, because both come from the same reading.
Because the readings come from behaviour, they transfer to animals that have no entry of their own. Look for the creature whose habits are closest, not the one whose body is closest: an insect that bites unnoticed is read nearer to a mosquito than to a butterfly, however similar the wings.
Colour and size work as modifiers rather than as separate symbols. A larger animal marks a larger version of whatever the reading already was; darker colouring generally weights it heavier and lighter colouring lighter. Neither changes the underlying reading, only its force.
Where a tradition disagrees with the others about a particular animal — and dogs are the clearest case — the entry says which framework each reading comes from, because applying the wrong one gives a confidently wrong answer.
One pattern recurs often enough across this group to be worth naming on its own: an animal that comes indoors. A house is read as enclosed and guarded space, so an animal inside it is never treated as coincidence. Which animal decides the reading — a butterfly is news arriving, a snake is a threat that has already crossed a boundary, a cat is something that considers itself entitled to be there.