Animalia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| style="background: #Template:Taxobox color; padding: 1em; font-size: 1.35em;" | Animals Fossil range: Ediacaran - Recent |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clockwise from top-left: Loligo vulgaris (a mollusk), Chrysaora quinquecirrha (a cnidarian), Aphthona flava (an arthropod), Eunereis longissima (an annelid), and Panthera tigris (a chordate). | |||||||
| style="background:#Template:Taxobox color; padding: 3px;" | Scientific classification | |||||||
|
|||||||
| Phyla | |||||||
|
|||||||
Animalia is the name of the animal kingdom. It is a kingdom which contains all animals. Animals are living things which do not make use of light to get energy and building materials (like plants do) to grow. They eat plants or other animals. Most higher animals can also move around, which is another difference with plants. Animals are divided into groups as well.
[change] Grouping animals
When scientists look at animals, they find things that certain animals have in common. They can then group the animals, according to some of these things.
One classification is that some animals have a backbone, and others do not. The animals with a backbone are called vertebrates, those without one are called invertebrates.
Examples of invertebrates are bees, dragonflies, jellyfish, etc.
Some vertebrates are:
- fish (even if they are several animals, they are still called fish)
- amphibians
- reptiles
- birds
- mammals
Some invertebrates are:
The problem with this classification though is that most animals are invertebrates. Therefore, other classifications are used more often, today. The vertebrate phylum is more commonly known as chordata. There are many other phylums, and every other one of them contain invertebrates.