WAYS OF CLASSIFYING ANIMALS
The biological “tree of life” classifies organisms to describe their evolutionary and genetic relationship to one another. As of 2022, over 1.5 million species had been identified in the Animal Kingdom, which is split into 39 branches known as phyla (plural). Animals are described as vertebrates (animal species with a backbone) and invertebrates (animal species without a backbone). Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all vertebrates. There are about 73,000 species of vertebrates. Of the animals that have been identified so far, about 95 percent are invertebrates and 5 percent are vertebrates. Animals can also be categorized by how they generate body heat. Enotherms (warm-blooded animals) warm themselves mainly through metabolic processes. Ectotherms (cold-blooded animals) get external heat from the environment.
Animal and plant taxonomy from species upwards: 1) species; 2) genus; 3) family; 4) order; 5) class; 6) subphylum; 7) phylum; 8) kingdom; 9) super kingdom. In reverse order they are: 1) kingdom; 2) phylum; 3) class 4) order; 5) family; 6) genus; 7) species — easily remembered by the mnemonic: “King Philip came over for great spaghetti.” Phyla are basic lineages such as vertebrates, arthropods, sponges, segmented worms and mollusks. The major classes of vertebrates are mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.
The largest animal phylum is Arthropoda, which includes insects, spiders, crustaceans, and their relatives. They have a segmented body, an external skeleton, and jointed limbs, and are sometimes placed in different phyla. Arthropoda includes more than 80 percent of all known animal species. Estimates of the number of arthropod species range from 1,170,000 to 5–10 million. The second most diverse Phyla group is molluscs, with 117,000 species
Two animals belong to different species if they can not mate with each other. New species often evolve when one species population is divided by, say, a stream that widens into an uncrossable river, and the subpopulations on either side of the river over time evolve independently and develop into new species that can not interbreed.
Approximate number of identified species in major animal groups:
Vertebrates: 73,000
Mammal: 5,500
Reptiles: 12,000
Mollusks: 88,000
Birds: 11,000
Fishes: 35,000
Crustaceans: 81,000
Arachnids: 111,000
Other Invertebrates: 164,000
Insects: 1.05 million
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Websites and Resources on Animals: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; Encyclopedia of Life eol.org , a project to create an online reference source for every species; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org ; Biodiversity Heritage Library biodiversitylibrary.org
Book: “Illustrated Animal Encyclopedia” (Macmillian).
Deadliest, Scariest and Creepiest Animals
World’s Most Deadly Animals
Animal — Humans killed per year, Sources: CNET; Source: Business Insider; BBC News
1) Mosquitoes — 1,000,000 — Mosquitoes — 750,000 — Mosquitoes — 725,000
2) Humans (homicide) — 475,000 — Humans (homicide) — 437,000 — Snakes — 50,000
3) Snakes — 50,000 — Snakes — 100,000 — Dogs — 25,000
4) Dogs — 25,000 — Dogs — 35,000 — Tsetse flies — 10,000
5) Tsetse flies — 10,000 — Freshwater snails — >20,000 — Crocodiles — 1,000
6) Assassin bugs — 10,000 — Assassin bugs — 12,000 — Hippopotamuses — 500
7) Freshwater snails — 10,000 — Tsetse flies — 10,000
8) Scorpions — 3,250 — Scorpions — 3,250
9) Ascaris roundworms — 2,500 — Ascaris roundworms — 2,500
10) Tapeworms — 2,000 — Tapeworms — 2,000 [Source: Wikipedia]
The Aedes aegypti mosquitos is arguably the world’s deadliest animal. It carries and transfer malaria causing parasites, killing as many as two million people a year. Mosquitoes also carrt dengue fever, zika virus and other diseases. Saw-scaled vipers and the Russel's viper are regarded as the world’s deadliest snakes. They may be responsible for about 58,000 deaths a year in India alone. The Asian cobra also kills a lot of people. [Source: Live Science, March 31, 2016]
In 2000, Reuters reported: While they may not be quite hefty enough to carry off children in the night, some of the wild kingdom's smaller inhabitants can set your hair on end. In a nationwide Zogby poll of adults, more than a third (34.4 percent) decided that the most frightening small creature was of the slithering variety — the snake. Next most feared were rats (20.2 percent), spiders (17.1 percent), and cockroaches (15.6 percent). [Source Reuters, October 31, 2000]
Other creatures scorned for their creepiness were bats (3.5 percent), worms (.8), and lizards (.4). Another 3.3 percent said some other creature was most frightening to them while 4.8 percent couldn't decide. Maybe it's an instinctual Eden thing, but both men (33.3 percent) and women (35.4 percent) agreed that the snake was the most despicable of nature's creations. What we asked: ``Which of the following do you consider the most frightening small creature: Spiders, rats, snakes, bats, lizards, worms, cockroaches, or other?''
Water Fleas Have More Genes than Humans
In February 2011, AFP reported, “A tiny, translucent water flea that can reproduce without sex and lives in ponds and lakes has more genes than any other creature, say scientists who have sequenced the crustacean’s genome. Daphnia pulex, named after the nymph in Greek mythology who transforms into a tree in order to escape the lovestruck Apollo, has 31,000 genes compared to humans who have about 23,000, said the research in the journal Science. [Source: AFP, February 4, 2011]
Often studied by scientists who want to learn about the effects of pollution and environmental changes on water creatures, the almost-microscopic freshwater Daphnia is the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced. But just because this creature — viewed as the canary in the gold mine of the world’s waters — has more genes doesn’t necessarily mean they are all unique, explained project leader John Colbourne. “Daphnia’s high gene number is largely because its genes are multiplying by creating copies at a higher rate than other species,” said Colbourne, genomics director at the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics.
Daphnia has a large number of never-before seen genes, as well as a big chunk of the same genes found in humans, the most of any insects or crustacean so far known to scientists. “More than one-third of Daphnia’s genes are undocumented in any other organism — in other words, they are completely new to science,” said Don Gilbert, coauthor and Department of Biology scientist at IU Bloomington.
These unique and previously unknown genes are “involved in response to the environment,” the study said. James Klaunig, professor of environmental health at Indiana University Bloomington, said the genome will help scientists study the effect of environmental pollutants on humans. Genome research on the responses of animals to stress has important implications for assessing environmental risks to humans,” Klaunig said.
“The Daphnia system is an exquisite aquatic sensor, a potential high-tech and modern version of the mineshaft canary,” he said. “With knowledge of its genome, the possible effects of environmental agents on cellular and molecular processes can be resolved and linked to similar processes in humans.” The water flea can be found throughout North America, Europe and Australia.
The Daphnia Genomics Consortium, led by the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics at IU Bloomington and the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, included more than 450 investigators around the globe.
Seven Rules That Explain the Extreme Shapes and Sizes of Animals
Patrick Pester wrote in Live Science: Animals come in extreme shapes and sizes, from enormous elephants and colossal squids to miniature marmoset monkeys and teeny-weeny frogs. But there is some method to nature's madness, and while evolution can be unpredictable, there are a few established rules that govern how animals take these extreme shapes. Below are seven rules that scientists have established to describe evolutionary trends. Keep in mind that these are general trends, and not every species is covered. Even nature's rules are made to be broken. [Source: Patrick Pester, Live Science, August 19, 2023]
Bergmann's Rule states that animals evolve to be larger in colder climates. This trend occurs because larger animals have a smaller surface area-to-volume ratio, which helps to reduce heat loss. Thus bigger bodies are better at retaining heat compared to smaller bodies. A polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in the Arctic, for example, is more than two and a half times taller than a sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) living in the tropics of South East Asia, according to The University of Texas at Austin. The rule is named after the German biologist Carl Bergmann, according to Oxford Reference.
Allen's Rule states that animals in colder climates tend to have comparatively smaller appendages, such as limbs, ears and tails, than their relatives in warmer temperatures. Similar to Bergmann's observation, this rule is all about retaining heat. Extremities typically have more surface area than volume; thus, larger appendages lose heat faster than smaller ones. For example, Arctic hares (Lepus arcticus) have shorter legs and smaller ears than American desert hares, such as black-tailed jackrabbits (L. californicus) and antelope jackrabbits (L. alleni). Allen's rule is named after American zoologist Joel Allen, according to Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.

Square-Cube Law is based on the mathematical principle that the ratio of two volumes is greater than the ratio of their surfaces. This principle means that as animals grow larger, their volume increases faster than their surface area, with larger animals eventually gaining more mass than their limbs can support. The square-cube law imposes a theoretical limit on how big animals can get, Live Science previously reported. Scientists believe the weight limit is around 120 tons (109 metric tons) for land animals.
Island Rule, also called the island effect or Foster's rule, holds that small animals on islands tend to evolve into giant versions of their mainland relatives, and large animals tend to evolve into dwarf versions of their mainland relatives. Under the island rule, animals on the extreme ends of the size spectrum move toward an intermediate size that suits the island's resources and predators, or lack thereof. A 2021 study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution found that the island rule is widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, with examples including giant lizards and extinct dwarf elephants.
Island Birds Evolve Toward Flightlessness. A 2016 study published in the journal PNAS found that island birds evolve toward a flightless form. From the extinct Mauritius dodos (Raphus cucullatus) to living New Zealand kiwis, flightlessness is a long-established phenomenon on islands. However, most island birds still retain their ability to fly. What the 2016 study established is that even flying birds evolve smaller flight muscles and longer legs on islands, meaning that all island birds evolve at least some way toward flightlessness. These traits are more prominent on islands with few predators, implying that reduced predation pressure encourages birds to give up flight.
Deep-Sea Gigantism: There's a tendency for invertebrate animals to evolve into giants at great ocean depths. Think colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) or giant crabs. Larger animals can move farther to find food and mate, which may help explain why there are so many giants in the deep sea where resources are scarce, Live Science previously reported. Larger animals also have more efficient metabolisms and a greater capacity to store energy from food. Finally, the deep ocean is cold, so deep-sea gigantism correlates with Bergmann's rule of colder climates producing larger animals.
Rensch's Rule describes a trend in sexual dimorphism, where one sex is larger than the other. The rule states that there's a pattern within animal lineages of sexual dimorphism decreasing with size when females are larger than males and increasing with size when males are larger than females. A 2004 study published in the journal PNAS found that in larger species of shorebird, males are typically larger than females, and sexual dimorphism increases the bigger the males of a species get. In contrast, females are typically larger than males in smaller shorebirds.
Why Do Animals Have Tails?
Michael A. Little wrote: Scientists have found fossils of animals with tails dating back hundreds of millions of years. Back then, early fish used their fanlike tails as fins to swim through oceans and escape predators. As these fish evolved into creatures that lived on the land, their tails started to change too. Whether they belong to reptiles, insects, birds or mammals, tails serve a wide variety of purposes. Modern animals use their tails for everything from balance to communication and finding mates. [Source: Michael A. Little, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York, The Conversation, August 15, 2022]
Scientists believe that dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex, swung their tails side to side to balance their heavy heads and bodies while walking on two legs. This movement allowed them to run fast enough to catch their prey. Similarly, present-day kangaroos use their tail for balance when they leap across the open land. But they don’t just use it as a counterbalance for their weight — the kangaroo’s tail also functions as a powerful third leg that can help propel them through the air.
Cats and other animals that climb often have bushy or long tails that help them balance, kind of like a tightrope walker holding a long pole. Monkeys use their long tail for balance while swinging through forest tree branches. Many have prehensile, or grasping, tails that act like hands and allow them to hold onto tree limbs. These tails are so strong that they can even hold the animal up while it eats fruit and leaves.
Other animals’ tails evolved into weapons. For instance, stingrays have a trademark stinger tail they can use as a defense when a predator attacks them. Venomous rattlesnakes have buttons of dried skin on their tail that make a racket when they shake it. This warns any animals that might threaten the rattlesnake that it’s getting ready to strike.
Many insects also have tails, but they evolved separately from other animals with backbones, like fish and mammals. Most tailed insects use their tails to lay eggs or to sting and paralyze hosts or prey. In some animals, like wasps, their tails can do both, as certain parasitic wasps will lay their eggs inside a host.
Grazing animals, like North American bison and the wildebeest and giraffe in Africa, have tails with bunches of long hairs that can be waived as a whisk to swat off mosquitoes and other insects that may be bothering them. Domestic cows and horses also have that kind of tail. Birds use their feathered tails both to balance while sitting on a tree limb and to steer and reduce drag while flying. Some birds also use their tail as a mating display. This visual display is most remarkable in species such as turkeys and peacocks: Male turkeys and peacocks will unfurl their colorful tail feathers to attract female mates.
Animals that live and hunt in groups or packs, like wolves, use a variety of tail positions to indicate their rank. Dogs, who descended from wolves, also use their tails for communication. You’ve probably seen dogs wag their tails when they’re excited. Even though humans don’t have a long grasping tail like monkeys do, or a vibrant feather tail like peacocks have, our ancestors did have tails. Scientists believe those tails vanished from our human ancestors around 20 million years ago. Once they started walking upright, they no longer needed tails to help with balance anymore.
Animals with Tusks
Asher Elbein wrote in the New York Times: “Elephants have them. Pigs have them. Narwhals and water deer have them. Tusks are among the most dramatic examples of mammal dentition: ever-growing, projecting teeth used for fighting, foraging, even flirting. So why, across the broad sweep of geologic history, do such useful teeth only appear among mammals and no other surviving groups of animals? According to a study published in October 2021 the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, it takes two key adaptations to teeth to make a tusk — and the evolutionary pathway first appeared millions of years before the first true mammals. [Source: Asher Elbein, New York Times, October 29, 2021]
“Around 255 million years ago, a family of mammal relatives called dicynodonts — tusked, turtle-beaked herbivores ranging in stature from gopher-size burrowers to six-ton behemoths — wandered the forests of the supercontinent Pangea. A few lineages survived the devastating Permian extinction period, during which more than 90 percent of Earth’s species died out, before being replaced by herbivorous dinosaurs. “They were really successful animals,” said Megan Whitney, a paleontologist at Harvard University and lead author of the study. “They’re so abundant in South Africa that in some of these sites, you just get really sick of seeing them. You’ll look out over a field and there’ll just be skulls of these animals everywhere.”
“To work out how these animals evolved their tusks, Whitney and her colleagues collected bone samples from 10 dicynodont species, among them the tiny, big-eyed Diictodon and the tank-like Lystrosaurus. They looked at how their canines attached to the jaw, whether they regularly regenerated lost teeth, like many reptiles do, and for indicators that their teeth grew continuously.
“Many mammal families have evolved long, saber-toothed fangs or ever-growing incisors for gnawing. Several early dicynodonts also had a pair of long canine teeth poking from their beaks. But these teeth, like most animal teeth, are composed of a substance called dentine, capped by a hard, thin covering of enamel. Tusks have no enamel, Whitney said, and grow continuously even as the comparatively softer dentine gets worn away.
“Both of these shifts laid the groundwork for the development of an ever-growing, well-supported tooth — a tusk. Afterward, Whitney said, late dicynodonts developed tusks at in at least two different lineages, and possibly more. This evolutionary pathway is reminiscent of another group of tusked animals: elephants. Early elephant relatives had enlarged canines that were covered with enamel, Whitney said. Later members of the family reduced the enamel to a thin band on one side of the tooth, like a rodent incisor, allowing the tooth to grow continuously. Finally, they ditched the enamel entirely. Even with those prerequisites, Whitney said, an adaptation like tusks isn’t inevitable. But it is available, and multiple mammal groups — elephants, whales, deer, pigs and walruses — have found uses for them. The reason that tusks are currently limited to modern mammals, then, lies in a specific arrangement of teeth that mammals inherited from the broader family of synapsids, the group that includes mammal forerunners like dicynodonts.
Studying Animals
The so-called Crittercam — a video camera that is attached to an animal, recording the world from the animals’s perspective — has been a great boon to scientists not to say producers of wildlife documentaries. The device was invented by Gary Marshall, now a scientist and filmmaker at National Geographic, after observing a remora clinging to a reef shark while scuba diving in Belize. The first devise was tried in 1987 and weighed three kilograms, compared to current models which weigh two third of a kilogram. Over the years the critter-cam has been attached to more than 50 species of marine, terrestrial and flying creatures including great white sharks, black bears, lions penguins, sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals.
Camera traps take photos when heat sensors trip the shutter as an animal passes. High speed video and film cameras have revolutionized the study of animals by allowing scientist to take a close look at sophisticated processes such as bumble bee flying, a bat landing and a moray eel eating.
Scientists track their movement and territories of animals with radio collars. They attach the collars after the animals are trapped or subdued with tranquilizer darts. After some time the batteries in the collars wear out and have to be replaced and the animals have to be trapped, tranquilized and re-collared. Each battery powered radio collar emits a distinctive signal that can be picked up with a directional antennae..
Anna White wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “In the past, researchers have relied on externally imposed methods of identifying individual animals, such as leg or arm bands, collars, toe clipping, ear notching, brands or tattoos. Such methods are often invasive and can alter behavior, injure the animals or increase susceptibility to predators by impeding movement or camouflage. ithin the past decade, biologists have developed new high-tech ways of using animals’ unique features to differentiate between individuals with minimal physical interference. Researchers are starting to rely on a combination of biometric technologies and animals’ unique characteristics to remove the need for invasive or disruptive tagging techniques, allowing conservationists to monitor individuals without putting undue stress on the animals. [Source: Anna White, Smithsonian magazine, April 2019]
Animal Sex
Natalie Angier wrote in the New York Times: The movie posters for ''Godzilla'' read: ''Size does matter.'' Hey, wipe the scales from your eyes, you overstuffed iguana! Size is not the point: points are the point. Titillators and claspers are the point. So are hooks, knobs and grooves, cerci, epiprocts and paraprocts. How about something that unfolds blade by blade, like a Swiss Army knife — or the phallus of a male oriental cockroach? If big is the best you can do, darling 'Zilla, no wonder you've been a box office snore. [Source: Natalie Angier, New York Times, July 7, 1998]
Up and down the phylogenetic scale, in all creatures where a female's eggs are fertilized internally, the male's phallus must perform pretty much the same task: penetration and ejaculation. Yet, as comparative biologists have found, the penis and its accessory parts are often far more complex and embellished than utilitarian design would seem to require. The organ of the male cat is stippled with spines, that of some male monkeys is flanged as though with wings, while the human penis has its foreskin and the distinctive bulbed glans beneath.
Animal Hybrids
Animals occasionally mate with members of another species, and nature occasionally endorses the match with a hybrid. Humans have taken advantage of hybridization to create striking oddities for centuries, mostly for the purposes of entertainment. And while these animals are often unhealthy and irrelevant to conservation efforts, hybridization is a natural phenomenon.
Jason Bittel wrote in National Geographic: Genetically, a hybrid animal is the result of interbreeding between divergent lineages, says Erica Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Denver. Most non-scientists would take that to mean breeding between two different species, but it can also include subspecies or even populations within a species that are distinguishable from one another based on certain traits or characteristics. “They might breed at different times of the year, or they might have behavioral differences that make them less likely to mate,” Larson says. “But then if they do mate, they might make hybrids that are totally fine.” [Source: Jason Bittel, National Geographic, October 10, 2022]
One instance of this may be the spotted skunk, which scientists recently divided into seven species, some of which look almost identical and live in the same areas, but mate and give birth months apart. “Another great example is coral,” says Larson. “A lot of corals release their gametes at a very particular time. So all of these species are physically in the same place, and maybe they could form a hybrid,” but they miss the chance by spawning hours or days apart.
Equids can be especially prone to hybridize. Donkeys and horses can breed to create mules, while zebras and horses make zorses or other combinations. In 2019, scientists proved for the first time that narwhals sometimes hybridize with belugas, resulting in a narluga. There are also at least 20 reports of various species of dolphins and whales producing hybrids in both the wild and captivity.
And it’s not just mammals. There are also documented cases of hybridization between timber rattlesnakes and western diamondback rattlesnakes, Cuban and American crocodiles, Russian sturgeon and American paddlefish, cutthroat trout and rainbow trout, as well as in various insects, such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites. Plants are especially capable at hybridizing and are thought to do so at even higher rates than animals.
Hybridization can be troublesome if one or both parent species is in danger of extinction. This is because when a species’ genetics becomes rare, the hybrid’s new combination of genetics can threaten its existence by replacing it. This is called genetic swamping, and it’s why hybridization with coyotes is one of the many threats currently afflicting red wolves in the southeastern United States. However, hybridization can also introduce beneficial genes, such as pesticide resistance, says Larson. If those genes help the hybrid survive and reproduce, such benefits can become widespread in a population. This is what scientists call adaptive introgression.
David Attenborough and Filming Animals
Through a brilliant series of BBC-produced nature documentaries veteran broadcaster Sir David Attenborough perhaps has done more than anyone to bring the animal and plant kingdoms into people’s homes in a way that has been endlessly interesting and amazing . His series include “Life on Earth”, “Living Planet”, “The Private Life of Plants” and “The Life of Birds”.
The brother of film director Richard Attenborough, who directed “Gandhi” and appeared in “Jurassic park”, David Attenborough he grew in College House near the University of Leicester, where his father was a principal, and won a scholarship in 1945 to attend Clare College Cambridge, where he studied zoology and geology and obtained a degree in natural science.
After a brief stint in the Navy Attenborough got a job editing children’s science textbooks but quickly became disillusioned with that. He applied for a job with BBC radio but was rejected. His resume however fell into the hands of one of the first BBC television producer who was impressed and hired Attenborough who didn’t have a television, like most people at that time (1952), and had only seen one television program. His early work included a quiz show called “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?” and a folk music series narrated by Alan Lomax. Among his early animal series were the studio -produced “The Patterns of Animals” and “Zoo Quest”, about an animal-collecting expedition, first broadcast in 1954.
In the mid 1960s Attenborough became comptroller at BBC 2. While held that job he continued to work on projects. In the mid 1970s he began working on “Life on Earth”, which was first broadcast in 1979. In 2010, at the age of 83, with two bad knees, Attenborough realized a boyhood ambition of standing at the South Pole and North Pole for his series “Frozen Planet”.
Mark Linfield, director of “Earth” and a crew member of the BBC “Planet Earth” series with Sir David Attenborough, told the Daily Yomiuri, the animals in the documentaries he’s worked on are carefully chosen in advance along with the best places and best times to see and shoot them. He said it is important for the crew to remain upbeat even when film scene don’t work as expected.”A director of wildlife films is slightly different from a director of a people documentary,” he said. “A normal director would try to get good onscreen performances from people. My job is more about designing the storyline and making sure that cameramen have the best possible opportunity to get the material that I need and making sure that they understand how I wanted it shot visually and the look that I want...So the cameramen needs to know exactly what images they are trying to get and I need to make sure that I’m giving them the best possible opportunity, I putting them in the best place with the best scientific advise with the best equipment.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Mostly National Geographic articles. David Attenborough books, Live Science, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated November 2024