The aim of this paper is to analyse various animal-specific complex lexical units together with patterns that can be held responsible for their underlying conceptual structure. Many examples of the data investigated in the paper seem to represent compounds as they are traditionally understood in the literature of the subject (see, among others, Bauer 2003; Katamba and Stonham 2006; Lieber and Štekauer 2009; Fàbregas and Scalise 2012; Bauer et al. 2013); however, others do not meet the basic criteria for compoundhood as postulated by, for example, Altakhaineh (2016). In my research I use the term animal-specific complex lexical units with reference to all animal-related composite expressions being the result of the working of metaphor-metonymy interaction.