God created the animals purposefully, bringing them forth from the earth "according to their kind" and calling them good, so that mankind shares with them an earthy origin and mortality. Yet three things set man apart: he alone is made in God's image, he is created male and female, and he alone is given dominion. That dominion is authority carried out as God Himself would act, out of love and concern for the well-being of the governed, to use but never abuse. The first thing God had Adam do was name the animals. This required observation of their characteristics, showed him that none could be his equal or helper, and introduced his responsibility to care for them. God made animals friendly to man, but after the Flood the relationship became one of fear and force, though dominion remains. Animals have rights from God: to share the creation, to rest on the Sabbath, to eat while they labor, and to be spared from exploitation, since God pleads the cause of the weak. God also built wisdom into their created traits, so that observing the ant, the deer, the serpent, or the wild ass teaches common sense and shows what He wants His people to emulate or avoid.

God created the birds and fish on day five and the cattle, creeping things, and beasts of the earth on day six, and only afterward created Adam. Genesis 2:19 therefore does not place the animals after Adam. Its simple past verb "formed" is ambiguous in Hebrew and should be read as a past perfect, "had formed," since Scripture does not contradict itself. God brought the animals to Adam so he did not have to search the earth. The text names only cattle, birds of the air, and beasts of the field, so fish, invertebrates, and creeping things are excluded, which removes about 98% of known species and leaves roughly 11,000 vertebrate species. Because speciation has occurred since creation, Adam needed to name only the original created kinds, perhaps a couple of thousand, which could be done in a few hours on the sixth day. God acts by fiat, so time was no constraint. Adam named each animal according to a striking characteristic: sheep for moving together, cattle for being mute, the fox for digging, the horse for swiftness, the antelope for leaping. The purpose of the exercise was to show Adam that no animal was comparable to him. None shared his intelligence or could enter a deep, committed relationship with him. This prepared him for the creation of Eve, a helper like him yet different.

God is the source of all life, and the Word, Jesus Christ, is the hands-on Creator through whom all things were made, including every living creature (John 1:1-4). Life is inherent in Him and the Father alone, and only They can impart it; even physical reproduction does not truly give life, since God remains responsible for it. Job 12:7-10 shows that the beasts, birds, and fish testify that the hand of the LORD made them, and that in His hand is the life of every living thing. Animals, like all creatures, live by the breath God gives, and He sustains and provides for them. God formed animal kinds with bodies similar to man's, which is efficient, and the closest flesh to ours is the pig's. Biologists' evolutionary assumptions, including the idea that life arose by chance and might exist elsewhere in different forms, are rejected, because Scripture teaches that Earth alone holds physical life. The Hebrew word khayim ("life") in Genesis 2:7 comes from khaya ("living"), a word usually used of untamed animals, which links the life breathed into Adam with the life of the animal creation.