The animal kingdom includes a vast variety of animal species that populate every inch of space on our planet. The amount of animals on Earth is so overwhelming that it is hard to name all of them without getting them mixed up. In order to make animals easier to differentiate, scientists created an interesting classification system based on one created by a Swedish scientist named Carolus Linnaeus during the eighteenth century. There are seven taxonomic categories used to classify living things. They are named in this order: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. One way to remember this whole list is by thinking “Koalas and Pandas Chew Over Forty Green Shoots.” Hopefully this will help the order of the categories seem easier to remember. I know that it helps me! I am glad to say, though, that usually only the genus and species would be used to help recognize an animal so that one doesn’t have to list the name from every category. This system is called binomial nomenclature (also created by Linnaeus), and it makes up the scientific name of every living thing. The genus would be the first name said and then would come the species. When writing this scientific name, the genus is capitalized and the species begins with a lowercase letter. Both of these categories are italicized. For example, the scientific name for humans is Homo sapiens. If you are confused, you can think of the genus as your last name and the species as your first name (ex: Smith bob).
Now that was just the naming system for all living things. The animal kingdom is actually grouped into several other groups. Two of these groups are vertebrates (animals with a backbone or spinal column) and invertebrates (animals that do not have a backbone or spinal column). A subphylum is named after the phylum of an animal and it says if the animal is a vertebrate or invertebrate. I learned from an interesting Web site that all the vertebrates are in the phyla Chordata and subphyla Vertebrata.
The vertebrates have more classification groups than invertebrates. They are fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, marsupials, primates, rodents, cetaceans, and other animals such as seals. The invertebrates are protozoa, echinoderms, annelids, mollusks, arthropods, crustaceans, arachnids and insects. Phew! That was a lot of animals! I don’t think I would ever be able to take part in classifying so many of them into these critical groups of animals. I really wonder how taxonomists (scientists who do all the classifying of animals) actually classified so many species. They are still, to this day, adding in so many more animals! I’m really thankful that they are there to help us all understand the differences between the animals of the world and show us the variety of living things nature so beautifully creates.
If you are interested in learning more about the animal kingdom, visit this cool Web site:
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