in this article, terminology of the scientific field is considered as a semiotic system, as an expression of a system of concepts reflecting the specific scientific woridview. Expressing a certain specific concept, a term turns into a carrier and a keeper of a piece of information, which has its value in a particular conceptual system, cumulating scientific knowledge accumulated by mankind over the entire period of its existence and expressed in a particular linguistic form. As a verbalized result of special scientific knowledge, science terminology is formed in conjunction with the everyday consciousness of native speakers. In the specific scientific zoological Russian and Kazakh discourse, a metaphor has not been an object of scholars' research. The comparison of the results of the cognitive mechanism of analogy in the zoological discourse in languages that are not genetically similar and not structurally identical to each other generates research interest. The comparative analysis of scientific zoological terminology in the Russian and Kazakh languages confirms the metaphoricity of the language of science, which is generated by the cognitive mechanism of analogy. The heuristic nature of scientific metaphors which are integrally included in scientific activity, hypothetically indicating new properties of the object, plays a significant role in creating terminology. In our opinion, it is important to consider the problem of perception of a metaphor in terms of cognitive processes interacting with linguistic knowledge in producing and understanding a language. A metaphor is regarded as a universal phenomenon, the mechanism of which is the conceptual integration actualized in the discourse. Such integration represents the stages of development of a linguistic sign. The universality of a metaphor affects its studies in the scientific discourse. The identified terminological metaphors in the scientific zoo-discourse are formed out of the universal archetypal models, where artifacts are metaphor-sources (clothing, fabric, work equipment/instruments), which we refer to basic conceptual sources, along with human being, fauna, flora, natural facts. Metaphors that have appeared within the universals are identical in Russian and Kazakh languages. Greco-Latin denotations of zoological terms are based on metaphorical universals. The comparative analysis of term-metaphors in Kazakh and Russian discourses reveals that only a small part of the terms are different due to different structural features of languages and the differences in the mechanism of analogy, caused by the peculiarities of the worldview, the specifics of geo-climatic, economic and business living and household conditions of the peoples. This explains most clearly the connection of the development of a language with the history of material and spiritual culture of the people. © International Information Institute.