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I know Terra has been essentially paved over, and has virtually no ecology to speak of, but what plants and animals that we'd know today live on? Possibly on other planets, taken there by early colonists i'd imagine.

I ask, as I've never heard of cats or dogs in 40k. Yes, Fenris has wolves, but they're not Terran wolves, but alien analogs. The main livestock animal of the Imperium is the Grox, not the cow, or chicken, or pig. Are they all extinct?

Rats. Wherever mankind goes, always will the rats go too.

Rats, cockroaches... that's about it, really. There's no oceans left, the planet is one giant city, and was subjected to several Apocalypse-level events in the 38,000 years between now and M40.

So, yeah, it's like a Covenant song, basically. To go from now to then would be to leave behind everything you have ever known. Oak trees no longer grow there, that's for certain.

I'm not really asking if anything else still lives on Terra, what I mean is whether Terran evolved flora and fauna still exist anywhere in the Galaxy.

You would assume that early colonists took cats and dogs for company, livestock animals and crops for food, as well as trees and flowers for terraforming (as well as the insects and birds required to pollinate them)

Are there really no references to any Terran species off-world? Does Ultramar not have a zoo with penguins and giraffes? Does Mephiston now have a pet monkey? Are Tyranids really to be denied Elephant DNA? Does nobody put a slice of bacon on their Grox burger?

There are analogs, but not direct examples.

There are cat-like creatures kept as pets, generally referred to as some manner of felid. There are dog-like creatures, given some sort of canine description and name. Wolves, of course, somehow survived by name (though the wolves on Fenris aren't actually canis lupus).

Plants moved to another ecology will mutate and evolve (or die), based on the local environmental conditions. Those that survive will become something else, maybe in some ways similar to what they were on Terra, maybe not. Animals, too, for much the same reason.

Hell, here on Terra, now, the dogs of 38K years ago are only somewhat similar to the dogs we have now.

The Gaunt's Ghosts series mentions ginkgo (on Monthax, pg 451 in The Founding omnibus), conifers (on Tanith), moss (on Monthax), as well as pigs (there's a pig farm on Nacedon). Grain-lice are also mentioned but these probably have little to do with the lice we know (also, they're thumb-sized). I think hummingbirds are mentioned too in passing. Specifically in Ghost Maker (just read it!).

Horses are used by the knightly orders on Caliban in the Descent of Angels. Oh and the Rough Riders too, of course.

Mankind brought most everything that was still around with them to the stars. We know horses, dogs, pigs, crocodiles, and cats are still around because they have been in BL novels and/or the codices themselves. Every plant that has been cultivated by humans for food is also almost certainly still around, that same probably applies to any animals we have/will domesticate.

Of course there will also be many alien animals as well, such as the Grox which appears to be the most common animal raised for meat in the Imperium. Its basically a reptilian cow.

Terra has giant, carnivorous penguins!! That was in an online GW article for Inquisitor about setting games on Holy Terra. Totes canon. Spread the word.

As opposed to what, normal-sized, pescetarian peguins? :p

There are enough linguistic memories that a critter in Ravenor is identified as a "simivulpa", which would obviously be something like a cross between a monkey and a fox - which means that someone must have remembered what those things are or were in order to create the name.

If you mean on Terra itself then I bet good money (no matter how many natural / man-made ecological disasters happened) that there is fauna of rats, hardy spiders, mutated scorpions, more than a few roach species (probably in various mutated sizes) and more than a few flies. Flora: .... Kudzu maybe, but I'm sure there's plants on Terra that will kill and eat you.

I imagine early human colonists took as much of their familiar environments with them as possible, so probably everything still exists alongside native xenos flora and fauna.

Only animal I remember in books on Terra, rats. Mentioned in the lower hive in a Ragnar book.

Horses on Caliban (as previusly mentioned), likely a highly mutated version of the genus Canis (obviously not Lupus, but something similar) is present on Fenris (they're far too similar to Earth wolves to not be their descendants), and tigers are bred for their fur (Legion). Also, wolves were present on Caliban (as evidenced by the Knights of Lupus wearing wolf pelts and wolf-skull helmets), as well.

40,000 years is enough, but not a terribly long time for evolution. Barring genetic modification (which early colonists most likely would have done to certain animals), things wouldn't become completely unrecognisable, especially if they found their existing physiology suitable to their new environments (and indeed, they would be probably have been introduced carefully into suitable conditions by early colonists).

This goes hand-in-hand with my assumption that pre-Golden Age languages are, along with other information, available all this time later. Perhaps part of some educational, STC-style Wikipedia kit for colonists. This could explain why the Imperium know oddly specific words like "Rhino" and "Devilfish", neither of which would be valuable organisms for colonists to take along with them for any reason other than science and ecosystem creation. It takes those names and legitimises them beyond the "they're just called that, ignore it".

I dont have a source, but I think mold, most fungi, proly ferns, some vines, absolutly bamboo would all still be around terra for the simple reason that it is almost impossible to kill them completly. I mean ferns were around with the dino's and they are still kicking around, and if you have ever gotten bamboo in your yard, you still have bamboo in your yard.

as mentioned earlier, rats, roaches, flies, etc, I remember reading somehwere that a single human produces enough waste and byproducts (like dead skin etc) to sustain a roach population.

Dogs would probably be present, but very different. In 15k years humans have taken canis from wolves to every dog breed we have now. so imagine wolf -> teacup poodle in 15k years + 38k years. Plus, the utility added by a dog population is pretty significant (hunting, protection, companionship etc).

Cows are a pretty inefficient source of meat, so I could see them being replaced almost exclusivly. They take a lot of land/time/resources invested to make not a lot of food. Pigs less so, but still its a negative return. Chickens and goats are about the closest thing you can get to an efficient source of calories but even then, there are better alternatives. If you really get down to it, insects are the most efficient way to get a food source for a large population. So yeah, from that logic, i think bugs would probably be used as a food source for a lot of the population, so they would still be around.

The grox has replaced the cow entirely, as well as many other bovines, such as oxen and buffalo. Grox have been described as a repto-mammalian species, or that may be different breeds of grox. They're raised for food, milk, hides, beasts of burden and labor, so on and so forth.

That words survive is, perhaps, not so amazing, as High Gothic was the language that the original tech manuals and such that Mankind had when they took to the stars. It's one of those languages that is so codified into a form that, unlike a general use-language, it doesn't change much over time.

In High Gothic, there is a word for a thing, and that word is used to describe that thing. Always. If something new is found that fits to that thing? Then that word will be used to describe that new thing. If possible, two different High Gothic words will be smashed together to describe something that fits both of those High Gothic words (kind of how the word "automobile" came to be.)

Absolute statements, like "utterly" and "absolutely" are probably wrong. Humans spread across the galaxy and likely brought samples of flora and fauna along. If there were colonies of psykers (Prospero) there might well be Amish-like Luddites or even Terra-agrarian purists who deliberately brought a whole ecosystem along for the ride.

Something like the real-world Seed Bank in Scandanavia could also exist, with pollen/seeds/eggs/sperm preserved... possibly even on Terra. Probably many such repositories, on any planet whose settlers were interested in preserving their Terran heritage.

Some of them might easily have survived to M41. Just because Grox are endemic to 40k and you never get references to cattle doesn't mean cattle are extinct. You just haven't heard about them.

Bottom line, it's a big galaxy. Anything can happen. GW almost never gives clear yes or no answers, partly so you can imagine your corner of the galaxy however you like. You want cattle, you can have cattle.

My two cents.