Choosing the first instance of a class but not nested instances via jQuery

Question

Given the following hypothetical markup:

<ul class="monkey">
    <li>
        <p class="horse"></p>
        <p class="cow"></p>
    </li>
</ul>

<dl class="monkey">
    <dt class="horse"></dt>
    <dd class="cow">
        <dl>
            <dt></dt>
            <dd></dd>
        </dl>
        <dl class="monkey">
            <dt class="horse"></dt>
            <dd class="cow"></dd>
        </dl>
    </dd>
</dl>

I want to be able to capture the “first level” horse and cow classes in each monkey class. But I do not want the classes of horses and cows NESTAD.

I started with .children, but this will not work with the UL example, since they are not direct children of .monkey.

I can use find: $ ('. Monkey'). find ('. horse, .cow'), but returns all instances, including nested ones.

I can filter find: $ ('. Monkey'). find ('. horse, .cow'). not ('. cow.horse, .cow.cow'), but this prevents me from choosing nested instances when calling the second function.

... , , " " . , , / - , .

UPDATE:

:

$('.monkey')
    .children('.cow')
        ...do something...
    .end()
    .children('li')
        .children('.cow')
            ...do something...
        .end()
    .end()

/, , , .

Answer 1

, .

$(".monkey").children(".horse, .cow, li > .horse, li > .cow")

Edited

$(".monkey, .monkey > li").children(".horse, .cow")

Answer 2

$('.monkey .horse:first')

http://api.jquery.com/first-selector/

Answer 3

, - ?

$('.monkey>.horse, .monkey>.cow')

.monkey, , .monkey .

Answer 4

This is the correct selector that will allow you to return only the first children of li and dt .

var selection = $(".monkey > * > .horse, .monkey > * > .cow");