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Zoo animals

Animal Kingdom Education Company

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Mammals
Warm blooded
vertebrates which
suckle their young

Birds
Warm blooded
vertebrates with
forelimbs modified
for flying

Reptiles
Cold blooded
vertebrates which
gave rise to birds
and mammals

Amphibia
Another group of
cold blooded
vertebrates

Fishes
cold blooded
and aquatic
vertebrates

Invertebrates
A vast array of
invertebrate groups

Home Page

The purpose of this site is to provide some basic information about the Animal Kingdom. We will give you information about many different types of animals, and show you where you may obtain further information.

Readers may find it helpful to begin by learning how animals are classified, if they do not know this already . And they might also be interested in how animals have evolved. So at the bottom of the present page we have sections on classification and evolution. Click on these buttons here to go straight to these sections.

Note to examiners

The two icons immediately below, were constructed by me using Adobe Photoshop. In Contrast, the Home icon which is to be found near the bottom om most pages, was downloaded from a site on the web. John Barker.

Experts on animals make use of a lot of technical terms. This is actually virtually essential to their work. But on this site we will try to keep technical terms to a minimum. You will see we have introduced two such terms in the left had column of this page - "invertebrate" and "vertebrate" animals. Now you will all have heard of vertebrae, the individual elements of our backbones. So, essentially, "vertebrate animals" are animals with backbones; "invertebrate animals" are animals that lack vertebrae.

Anatomy, Physiology and Ecology

To study any animal properly, we need to investigate its structure (anatomy) and how its body works (physiology). We also need to study where it lives, and how it interacts with both its physical environment, other animals and plants (ecology).

Page under construction

elephant

Classification

The animal kingdom is divided first into Phyla (singular Phylum). Then phyla are subdivided into Classes, classes into Orders, orders into Families, families into Genera (singular Genus), and genera into species. Other subdivisions are also sometimes used which are self-explanatory, for example, sub-classes, and sub-species (sometimes called races).

Let us see how the human species fits into this classificatory scheme (other subdivisions used given in brackets)

Phylum: Chordata
(Sub-phylum: Vertebrata)
(Super-class: Gnathostomata)
Class: Mammalia
(Sub-class: Theria)
(Infra-class: Eutheria)
(Cohort: Unguiculata)
Order Primates
(Sub-order: Anthropoidea)
(Superfamily: Hominoidea)
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: sapiens.

So the human species is Homo sapiens.
All species have a name in two parts like man.

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Evolution

Evolution operates on the genetic make up of the organism, that is on the inherited factors called genes. Each organism has thousands of genes. Together they make up the genotype of the organism. In each individual, each gene is present twice in its body cells. Now a gene exists in alternate forms, called alleles, a1, a2, etc. So for example, for one gene X, one individual of a species may have a1,a1, another individual a1,a2, a third individual a2,a3, etc. Of course, in a whole population, there may be many individuals with say a1,a2 or any other combination. But I think you can see that since there are thousands of genes in any species, every individual is likely to have a unique genotype.

Now with any organism in any particular environment, some genotypes are likely to better adapt individuals to that environment than some other genotypes. Individuals with the more advantageous genotypes are more likely to leave descendants than other individuals. So gradually, over a long period of time, the genotypic compostion of the species changes. This process is called natural selection. These genotypic changes may affect internal physiological processes, behaviour, or the appearance of the organism. This is evolution.

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