Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder are self-confessed animal lovers, and maybe having pets is also a sort of practice prior to having kids someday.

While they are already engaged, they haven't quite gotten used to the word fiancé or fiancée just yet.

"We have all kinds of words," the "Twilight" actress told E!. "We stick with human. It's the best word."

"He's my human," Nikki Reed said talking about fiancé Ian Somerhalder.

Nikki Reed was recently recognized for her work with the Wildlife Waystation and the Ian Somerhalder Foundation during the annual Noble Awards.

"I wish I could take credit for it. I'm being acknowledged tonight for the work I did, but I can't take credit for it. Most of it is my mother. I have a mother who brought me up with the understanding that everything deserves a home and love and food and shelter," she said.

For his part, Ian Somerhalder said fiancée Nikki Reed has the right attitude.

"If you think about a world without an environment and a world without animals it would be a very, very desolate scary place," he said.

In a previous interview with People magazine, Ian Somerhalder's fiancée Nikki Reed described herself as "animal obsessed.

"I basically have a farm in my house," she said. "I do feel like by buying rats from a pet store, you are saving them because if not, they would get fed to a snake or something."

To date, the actress said that she owns "two horses, my two German shepherds, my mom's dog, and then I sort of adopted another three dogs."

"Animals are my life. My mom and I built a guest house on my property so that my mom could help me fostering animals. I do multiple fosters a month. Sometimes I get a litter of nine puppies and put them in a nursery I created. And in the backyard, I also have an outdoor setup that's actually enclosed so the hawks can't get to it," she explained.