grass, pumpkin, etc. are listed as general tags instead of species tags - why is this the case?

Because they're generally ambient elements rather than characters? Tag flora_fauna.

Plants, while living organisms, aren't always portrayed as living creatures in media, especially in furry art as they aren't "animals".

If they are portrayed as living creatures, they warrant the flora_fauna tag + specific plant type tag they are, if applicable

then why do all the ambient_x (e.g. ambient_bird) tags imply their respective species?

qazwsxedcrfvtgbyhnuj said:
then why do all the ambient_x (e.g. ambient_bird) tags imply their respective species?

...because they're animals

qazwsxedcrfvtgbyhnuj said:
then why do all the ambient_x (e.g. ambient_bird) tags imply their respective species?

B... because if there's an ambient_bird in the image, there's a bird in the image?

Ultimately, we focus on animals. Most of the characters here are mostly recognizable as an animal. someone says "I want to see a butterfly anthro," Then they search butterfly and they get a lot of pictures of other characters with butterflies being a cute part of the picture. ... when people search butterfly solo they get the same search but only solo characters... with butterflies.

post #1772533 - this is a pony-thing with a butterfly.
post #1780474 - This is a foxy thing with a butterfly.

none of these are post #1754046 (which... should probably not be tagged butterfly, but okay.)

idealy, butterfly -ambient_butterfly should only bring you pictures where the butterflies are a significant, focal part off the image, being directly interacted with and directly influencing the character in question.

like post #1765012 post #1755800 post #1772257 ... with the overall goal being to help you find pictures where the butterflies are Important, so that even if you're looking for buterfly anthros, you can still find Nice Butterfly Pictures too. ... since wolf butterfly anthro doens't distinguish between a butterfly anthro with a wolf, or a wolf anthro with a butterfly. .... or a skunk anthro with a wolf and butterfly. y'know?

ANd while pants are great things, they're rarely sentient critters, drawn with identifiable species. Flora_fauna has 8500 posts. About half of them are pokemon. there's another 1000 or so pirana plants. -mario_bros -pokémon flora_fauna brings us to about 3700 pictures. and .... okay. there are a lot of thigns here that are green and leafy and rooty, but don't have an obvious PLANT species. They're jsut "planty"

soem are different. post #1707220 clearly has some pumpkin in it. Pumpkin has 3000 posts, but pumpkin flora_fauna has around 150 posts.

I guess tl;dr... tagging plants as species would not be helpful in most circumstances.

BUt hey, maybe we SHOULD reconsider it? I mean they are living beings. is a "feral maple tree" any less valid than an anthro maple tree?

if you want to see this change, how about helping is non-botanists out and collect a list of as many plant-species tags as you can come up with.

SnowWolf said:
even if you're looking for buterfly anthros, you can still find Nice Butterfly Pictures too. ... since wolf butterfly anthro doens't distinguish between a butterfly anthro with a wolf, or a wolf anthro with a butterfly. .... or a skunk anthro with a wolf and butterfly. y'know?

i suppose theoretically that difficulty could be solved by separating feral and anthro species tags, although that would probably introduce tons of twys problems, not to mention complete restructuring of the site haha