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 grab the 'first level' of horse and cow classes within each monkey class. But I don't want the NESTED horse and cow classes.

I started with .children, but that won't work with the UL example as they aren't direct children of .monkey.

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

I can filter the find: $('.monkey').find('.horse, .cow').not('.cow .horse, .cow .cow') but that prevents me from selecting nested instances on a second function call.

So...I guess what I'm looking for is 'find first "level" of this descendant'. I could likely do this with some looping logic, but was wondering if there is a selector and/or some combo of selectors that would achieve that logic.