Everyday, we see animals around us. Animals can vary from one specie to another, and we have some in our homes, on the street, in jungles, oceans, lakes, air, swamps, deserts, and even ice. We can see lots of them, and we can identify that they are animals, for instance wolves, dogs, and lions, but then, are what about simple ones like Amoebas or weird ones like Sea Sponges?
Studying animals is very complicated, from studying about their biological characteristics, to studying how they interact with other animals of different species, their social lives and so on, and this has made zoology a very complex one with different types of career form scientist, veterinarian, biological engineers, and so on.
We have about 1.5 million different types of animals and we are yet to discover lots of them.
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In other to understand animals fully, identifying, naming, describing, and classifying is needed, and that is what we refer to as taxonomy. We must confess that no two types of organisms are the same, although they can have striking features such as eyes. When we discuss, taxonomy, we cannot do so without mentioning Aristotle who was regarded as a zoologist, although a philosopher. he was able to categorize living things into plants, animals, and humans where he put plants as the baseline. Carl Linnaeus cannot be forgotten as he was the one who developed the binomial nomenclature system where living things were given two latin names that was unique to their types alone.
They were divided by the last hierarchy which is known as species which are organisms of the same type that can breed together and multiply, the next hierarchy is the Genus which are organisms of almost similar characteristics but cannot bread together. The hierarchy kept increasing to family, Order, Class, Subphylum, Phylum, and Kingdom. With this, we have the binomial nomenclature which helps to separate all animals, as two named animals cannot have the same binomial nomenclature.
There are 4 key traits that make animals special and they eaters, movers, sexual reproducers, and multicellular but while we will like to believe this, there are a lot of rules that break this believe. For instance mayflies can only feed with their mouth as larvae but they lack mouth and guts when they become adults, also if we say that animals are eaters, then carnivorous plants will be regarded as animals.
Checking the evolutionary history of different animals through phylogenetics, it was seen that all animals came from a particular ancestor by checking their DNA. with this, it was easier to prove that the animals that cannot eat as adults are still animals since they can be traced back to the same ancestor as other animals, while carnivorous plants are not animals since they do not share the same ancestor with other animals.
The intricate world of animals continues to unfold, presenting challenges and surprises that enrich our understanding of life's diverse forms. The study of animals, from the simplest organisms to the most complex, unveils the incredible diversity and interconnectedness of life on our planet. With Taxonomy, the framework for classifying and organizing this wealth of biological wonders, ensuring precision and clarity in our exploration is possible. While general traits characterize animals, exceptions and anomalies add layers of complexity making it fun to study.
Read More
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/taxonomy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1973966/
https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Agriculture_and_Horticulture
https://study.com/academy/lesson/shared-characteristics-of-animals.html
https://bio.libretexts.org/Introductory_and_General_Biology
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/training/online/courses/introduction-to-phylogenetics/what-is-phylogenetics/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123334/