Talk:Fluttershy/@comment-5456337-20160313170549/@comment-27739895-20160313232052

Well, in the eyes of a biologist, humans are regarded as animals as well! (source: Wikipedia)

Other than that, it's true that the border between ponies and "animals" is blurry. As a matter of fact, they are all listed on the same page here! What generally differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is the fact they are "sapient" (self-awareness and ability to act with appropriate judgement) and have an elaborated speech but, in MLP, it isn't always a successful identification method (we have cattle that speak, even though they are probably "animals" in the eyes of ponies, and we have Angel Bunny who is very much sapient despite being a speechless pet).

In the end, the way I see it is that we have the animals with "significant human-like" behavior:
 * ponies, donkeys, mules, zebras, buffaloes, yaks, deers (comics-only), bulls (comics-only)... also, if we count fantasy creatures: griffons, changelings, some dragons, diamond dogs and a few more...;

and we have the other creatures which are "animal-ish animals", sometimes with unusual intelligence traits (again the cattle and Angel Bunny, along others...).