Panteriore, Irish May

Petalino, Geraldine Joy

Cacho, Francia May

Verzo, Kim Vyron

Resurreccion, Danica

ProfEd 7b

MW 10:00-11:30

Classification of Animals

In order for us to understand how all living organisms are related, they are arranged into different groups. The more features that a group of animals share, the more specific the group is. Animals are given scientific names so that people all around the world can communicate about animals, no matter what language they speak (these names are traditionally Latin words). Animals belong to a number of different groups, starting with the animal kingdom.

Kingdom

       All living organisms are first placed into different kingdoms. There are five different kingdoms to classify life on Earth, which are Animals, Plants, Fungi, Bacteria, and Protists (single-celled organisms).

Phylum

The animal kingdom is divided into 40 smaller groups, known as phylum. Here,animals are grouped by their main features. Animals usually fall into one of five different phylum which are Cnidaria (invertebrates), Chordata (vertebrates), Arthropods, Molluscs and Echinoderms.

Class

The phylum group is then divided into even smaller groups, known as classes. The Chordata (vertebrates) phylum splits up into Mammalia (Mammals), Actinopterygii (Bony Fish), Chondrichthyes (Cartilaginous Fish) , Aves (Birds), Amphibia (Amphibians) and Reptilia (Reptiles).

Order

Each class is divided into small groups again, known as orders. The class Mammalia (Mammals), splits into different groups including Carnivora, Primate, Artiodactyla and Rodentia.

Family

In every order, there are different families of animals which all have very similar features. The Carnivora order breaks into families that include Felidae (Cats), Canidae (Dogs), Ursidae (Bears), and Mustelidae (Weasels).

Genus

Every animal family is then divided into small groups known as genus. Each genus contains animals that have very similar features and are closely related. For example, the Felidae (Cat) family contains genus including Felis (small Cats and domestic Cats), Panthera (Tigers, Leopards, Jaguars and Lions) and Puma (Panthers and Cougars).

Species

Each individual species within the genus is named after it's individual features and characteristics. The names of animals are in Latin so that they can be understood worldwide, and consist of two words. The first word in the name of an animal will be the genus, and the second name indicates the specific species.

Classifying Animals According to the Food They Eat

Animals need food to survive. There are 4 classification of animals according to what they it. These are the following: 1. Herbivores- Animals that only eat plant.             Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, herbivora, cited in Charles Lyell‘s 1830 Principles of Geology. Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons. Herbivora is derived from the Latin herba meaning a small plant or herband vora, from vorare, to eat or devour.  A herbivore is an animal that gets its energy from eating plants, and only plants. Many herbivores have special digestive systems that let them digest all kinds of plants, including grasses. 2. Carnivores - Animals eat only other animals.                 A carnivore  meaning ‘meat eater’ (Latin, carne meaning ‘flesh’ and vorare meaning ‘to devour’) is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation orscavenging. Animals that depend solely on animal flesh for their nutrient requirements are considered obligate carnivores while those that also consume non-animal food are considered facultative carnivores. A carnivore that sits at the top of the foodchain is an apex predator. 3. Omnivores- Animals that eat both plants and animals.               An Omnivore, meaning ‘all-eater’ (Latin omni, vorare: “all, everything”, “to devour”), is a polyphage (“many foods“) species that is a consumer of a variety of material as significant food sources in their natural diet. These foods may include plants, animals, algae and fungi. Omnivores often are opportunistic, general feeders with neither carnivore nor herbivore specializations for acquiring or processing food, and are capable of consuming and do consume both animal protein and vegetation. Many omnivores depend on a suitable mix of animal and plant food for long-term good health and reproduction. Omnivores eat plants, but not all kinds of plants. Unlike herbivores, omnivores can’t digest some of the substances in grains or other plants that do not produce fruit. They can eat fruits and vegetables, though. Some of the insect omnivores in this simulation are pollinators, which are very important to the life cycle of some kinds of plants. 4. Detrivores or Scavengers- Animals that eat the remains of died animal.                       Detritivores, also known as detritophages, detritus feeders, detritus eaters, or saprophages, are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces).There are many kinds of invertebrates, vertebrates and plants that carry out coprophagy. By doing so all these detritivores, contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles. They should be distinguished from other decomposers, such as many species of bacteria, fungi and protists, which are unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter, but instead live by absorbing and metabolizing on a molecular scale (saprotrophic nutrition). However, the terms detritivore and decomposer are often used interchangeably. Various word roots relating to decayed matter (detritus, sapro-), eating and nutrition (-vore, -phage), and plants or life forms (-phyte, -obe) produce various terms, such as detritivore, detritophage, saprotroph, saprophyte, saprophage, and saprobe; their meanings overlap, although technical distinctions (based on physiologic mechanisms) narrow the senses. S