"Il connaît beaucoup de choses sur les animaux sauvages."

Translation: He knows a lot of things about wild animals.

[pigpunk]

Isn't connaître used in relation to people and savoir used in relation to knowledge?Therefore would savoir not be more appropriate here?

[Sitesurf]

"connaître" + people is a natural link, indeed.

In this sentence, the man knows a lot of things because he learnt them, he knows them as facts and by heart and he is familiar with the matter.

All in all, both verbs could be used in this sentence.

to know more:

http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/savoirconnaitre.htm

[yalkhder]

Why is it "les animaux" and not "des animaux"?

[Sitesurf]

because they are defined by "wild", so not whichever animals or some animals but THE wild animals

[tomgg]

If what you say is true, the English translation should require the article.

[Yuujen]

We don't say I know a lot about the wild animals, that would mean a specific group of wild animals, in English. However in French, it means generally all wild animals.

[cockroachlurcher]

More generally, in french to express a generality you would use les whereas in english you wouldn't i.e men are adults, les hommes sont des adultes.

[Cheval_Blanc]

Question: why is it "de choses" here, rather than "des choses"?

[Sitesurf]

Many expressions about quantities are built with "de" without any article:

• beaucoup de, moins de, plus de, autant de, un peu de, peu de...

[greatlanguages]

Why is "sur" = about, rather than "de" for of/about?

[Ratchet111653]

savage animals isn't a good translation?

[Jackie115620]

I don't understand why 'He knows lots of things about wild animals' is not accepted.

[georgeoftruth]

That is currently accepted in the database. We don't know why it didn't accept for you. Report it if you see it again.

[Jackie115620]

OK. Will do. To be fair, I think (on reflection) that I might have put 'know' rather than 'knows' so it's marked me incorrect because of a typo.