Best practise for creating a dynamic list of dynamic lists?

I want to populate a list (RecycleView or similar) with any number of elements in runtime.

Example:

//Data Models
Animal(spices: String, breed: Breed)  
Breed(name: String, color: String)  

The list should look something like:

Cats
-----------
Ragdoll
White

Bengal
Beige/Black

Dogs
-----------
Golden Retriever
Beige

German Shepard
Brown

St. Bernard
White/Brown

The list can be infinite long and each Animal can have an infinite amount of Breeds.
I have been using nested recyclers but I am afraid this will cause bad performance.

What is the "correct" way of populating this kind of list?

You'll need a RecyclerView Adapter with multiple wiew types. Check out this codelab, it should help you out.

Edit: the easiest way to host all this data in the adapter is to flatten it. Kind of like:

val data = mutableListOf<Object>()
animals.forEach { animal ->
    data.add(animal)
    animal.breeds.forEach { -> breed
        data.add(breed)
    }
}

// ... use the data as a source for your adapter

The item view type

override fun getItemViewType(position: Int) =
    when (getItem(position)) {
        is Animal -> ITEM_VIEW_TYPE_HEADER
        is Breed -> ITEM_VIEW_TYPE_ITEM
    }

etc etc