The metaphoric nature of proverbs is one of their characteristic features making them figurative, emotional and memorable. The article deals with the English proverbs based on zoomorphic metaphors that result from the man’s observation of domestic animals. Using the method of continuous sampling we have selected from the English paremiological fund about a thousand English proverbs containing zoomorphic metaphors. Further quantitative analysis has shown a high percentage of metaphoric images of agricultural animals – a horse, a pig, a sheep, etc.
