I'm looking for information on which abilities become disabled in animal form. I've been playing around with spider form and what I can do doesn't quite match the animal form limitations I thought existed:

I can still do carpentry as a spider. This surprised me. The example I've always heard is that "cows can't hold a hammer to do carpentry", so I assumed that limitation applied to all animal forms. Is it just cows that can't do carpentry, or is that information completely out of date? I haven't tried blacksmithing or toolcrafting which seem to me like they'd also require hands.

I cannot gather wood, either with a handsaw or with the blade necklace. I thought the necklace was supposed to allow animals to gather wood, but it's been a long time since I heard that, so I'm probably just out of date again.

Other than that, the only other trade skill limitation seems to be that I can't milk cows. This part is what I expected.

I think I also finally figured out how the equipped main and off hand items work: If you are an animal you can "equip" an item which will give you its associated gear bonuses, but you cannot "wield" an item to get its associated combat skill unlock, like sword, shield, druid or lute.