| The ANIMAL KINGDOM |
What are animals? There are several Kingdoms of living things, usually considered now to be five Kingdoms. Originally only two basic Kingdoms were recognized, which were the Animal Kingdom and the Plant Kingdom. There are and have been various suggestions of breakdowns of life.
One breakdown is into five kingdoms: Animalia (animals-bugs to humans), Plantae (all plants), Fungi (fungus and molds--from athlete's foot to mushrooms), Monera (bacteria - small celled microorganisms without true cell nuclei), and Protoctista (a catch-all for the multicellular organism which don't fit into the Animal, Plant, Fungus or Monera Kingdoms. It also includes such things as as seaweeds and kelp).
The first breakdown of each Kingdom is into phyla. The Animalia Kingdom is usually considered to be made up of about thirty (30) phyla. The number of each phyla vary enormously.
In the table below, if an item is shown like this it means you can click on that item and go to the page where you will find more specificity.
The phylum to which we belong is the Chordates
(i.e. those with a spinal cord).
Let's look at these phyla in the Animal Kingdom:
Here are the Animal Kingdom phyla in alphabetical order (probably the least logical arrangement)
| Phyllum | Common Name /Examples |
Approx. # of Species | Information and Comments on Phyllum |
| Acantheocephala | Spiny-headed worms | 600 | Parasites of the alimentary canal--usually carnivores |
| Annelida | Earthworms, Leeches | 8,900 | Body divided into a number of more or less similar segments. Fresh water, Marine and Terrestrial. Have well-developed coelom. |
| Arthropoda | Crustaceans, Scorpions, Spiders, Insects | >2,000,000 | The largest Animal Phyllum by a wide margin with more species than all other Animal phyla combined. Segmented animals with paired, jointed appendages on some or all of their body segments. There are more than 800,000 species of Insecta alone have been described and some Zoologists believe there may be 10,000,000 species. |
| Brachiopoda | Brachs, Lamp Shell | 335 | Marine animals living on the bottom in shells with two valves. Can be confused with Bi-Valve Mollusks. They thrived during the Paleozoic era. There are more than 30,000 extinct species described. |
| Chaetognatha | Arrow worms | >100 | Voracious carnivores in the form of small, slender torpedo-shaped marine planktonic animals. |
| Chordate | Mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish | 45,000 | This is the Phyllum usually considered by lay persons to be "the animals". They are the best known Phyllum and contain humans. Chordates: 1. have walls of their pharynx, at some stage in their life cycle, perforated by gill clefts; 2. a hollow dorsal nerve cord (spinal cord in vertebrates); 3. an axial cartilagenous rod, the notochord, lying immediately beneath the nerve chord. Most chordates have a backbone and are called vertebrates. Two or three subphyla are small invertebrate groups. |
| Cnidaria | Coelenterates, hydra, corals | 9,500 | Nearly all are marine animals. They are radially symmetrical with tissues and organs, have stinging cells called nematocysts on their tentacles. |
| Ctenophora | Comb jellies, sea gooseberries | 90 | Aquatic and transparent for the most part |
| Echinodermata | echinoderms, including sea urchins and star fish | 6,000 | Mostly bottom-dwelling marine animals, usually displaying five-fold symmetry. Fluid-filled tube feet are the means of locomotion and feeding. |
| Echiura | Spoon worms | 140 | Unsegmented marine worms which burrow in marine deposits |
| Ectoprocta | Ectoprocts | 5,000 | Small aquatic animals, mostly colonial |
| Entoprocta | Entoprocts | 150 | Small marine animals, mostly sedentary, living in colonies attached to rocks, shells, algae or other animals |
| Gastrotricha | Gastrotrichs | 400 | Aquatic microscopic animals with cilia (filaments which move) on their bodies. |
| Gnasthostomulida | Jaw worms | 80 | Microscopic marine worms. |
| Hemichordata | Hemichordates | 90 | Small soft-bodied animals that inhabit shallow u-shaped burrows in sands or muddy sea. |
| Kinorhyncha | Kinorhynchs | 150 | Small worm-like marine animals. |
| Loricifera | Loriciferans | 10 | Tiny marine animals with abdomen covered by a girdle of spiny plates called a lorica. |
| Mesozoa | Mesozoans | 50 | Small, worm-like organisms |
| Mollusca | Mollusks, including gastropods, bi-valves (clams, mussels, oysters, etc.) | 110,000 | Mollusks are the second largest phylum of animals. They live in aquatic or moist environments. They are soft-bodied and usually protected by a calcareous shell that is secreted by a fold of the body wall called the mantle. Many shells are formed of calcium carbonate, but some are made of ???. |
| Nematoda | Nematodes or roundworms | >80,000 | Estimates are that there may be as many as 1,000,000 species of nematodes in the world. In terms of numbers of individuals, nematodes are the most abundant group of multicellular animals on Earth. They attack plants to the dismay of plant lovers. |
| Nematomorpha | Horsehair worms, Gordian worms | 240 | Long, thin parasitic worms living in insects and crustaceans as juveniles, then as free-living in water as adults |
| Nemertina | Ribbon worms, proboscis worms | 900 | This phyla's characteristic is long, sensitive anterior proboscis which is used to explore its environment and to capture prey. |
| Onychophora | Velvet worms | 80 | Soft-bodied, segmented animals with many paired but unjointed legs. They are confined to humid tropical areas of the Earth. |
| Pentastoma | Tongue worms | 70 | Parasitic worms found residing in the respiratory passages of air-breathing vertebrates with a chitinous cuticle that is periodically molted to allow for growth. |
| Phoronida | Horseshoe worms | 10 | Marine worms with as many as 1,500 hollow tentacles. They live in tubes which they secrete and strengthen with sand or shell fragments. |
| Placozoa | trichoplax adhaerens | 1 | There is only one species known in this phylum. This is the least complex animal known. It has no tissues, organs or symmetry. |
| Platyhelminthes | Flatworms, flukes, tapeworms | 15,000 | Ribbon-shaped and soft-bodied. This is the least complex of the animals which have some form of a head.They can be cut and each piece regenerates a whole being. |
| Pogonophora | Beard worms | 100 | Extremely slender, tube-living worms without a gut. |
| Porifera | Sponges | 10,000 | All species are aquatic and the vast majority are marine with only about 150 species living in fresh water. They have no tissues, organs or symmetry. |
| Priapulida | Priapulids | 10 | Small carnivorous marine worms. |
| Sipuncula | Peanut worms | >300 | Unsegmented marine worms which live in crevices or are burrowers. |
| Rotifera | Rotifers or wheel animals | 2,000 | Aquatic microscopic animals with their anterior end modified into ciliary organs called corona. The beating of this cilia resembles a rotating wheel and is used for locomotion of the animal. |
| Tardigrada | Water bears | 380 | Minute animals which live in films of water around mosses and other low terrestrial features. They have four pairs of stubby legs which terminate in claws. These are sold as "pets" dry to put into water and hatch. |
The phyla are broken down into different layers of ever more specific individuals. Here is an example of a wolf, which is an animal, of course.
| The wolf is classified as: Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordate Class: Mammalia Subclass: Theria Infraclass: Eutheria Order: Carnivora Family: Canidae Genus: Canis Species: lupus |
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