ScienceForDummies - Week 9: Zoology and Animal Classification

 Hello! After a week of polling, our winner comes to a draw, but since the topic fit better with last week's, I chose this one - Animal Classification. 

All animals are Eukaryotes and under the kingdom Animalia. The central point in all animals making them distinguished as animals is, with only a few exceptions, consumation of organic material, the breathing of oxygen, able to move and have myocytes, and reproduce sexually, as well as a few more attributes. A myocyte is a muscle cell unique to animals.

So animals are:

Life -> Domain: Eukaryota -> Kingdom: Animalia

Now let's study the inner classifactions of animals. First we have Phylums, the taxonomic rank under Kingdoms. Animal phylums include Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthe, Nematoda, Annelida, Arthropoda, Mollusca, Echinodernata, and Chordata. Let's go through them one by one:

PORIFERA

Porifera comprises of sea sponges. Sea sponges are invertebrates (meaning they don't have a backbone/vertebrae). Sea sponges are animals though the common misconception of them being marine plants.

CNIDARIA 

Cnidaria is a phylum under Animalia containing marine animals such as jellyfish, hydroids, sea anemones, and corals. Yes, corals are not plants too. The central frature making something being under Cnidaria is the possesion of cnydocytes, a special cell.

PLATYHELMINTHES and NEMATODA

Platyhelminthes is a small phylum comprising of flatworms that are mostly marine. Some of them are parasitic and they are very simple invertebrates. They are bilaterian, meaning their embyros grow symettrically. Nematoda also are mostly comprised of worms (not the worm you can see) and alos often parasitic.

ANNELIDA

Annelida is a phylum of sevmented worms, and it includes visible worms like earthworms and leeches. Some live in marine environments. As you see, many of these phylums are some kind of thin wormlike shaped thing, but in no way is Annelida comparable to the previous two phylums because of the size gap.

ARTHROPODA

Arthropoda is a large phylum comprising of invertebrates with jointed exoskeletons (outer skeletons). Arthropods include spiders, crabs, ants, bees, beetles, millipedes, centipedes, lobsters, shrimp, and barnacles, and makes up a majority of the worldwide animal poppulation.

MOLLUSCA

Molluscs is another large phylum, they are invertebrates and rhey must be protostomic, meaning their mouths develop before their anhs during embyronic development. At least in the marine environment, molluscs are the dominant phylum, and they include octopuses, squids, snails, slugs, abalone, cuttlefish, etc. 

ECHINODERMATA

All Echinoderms are marine, and they usually have 5-point radial symmetry, meaning they are symmetrical and have five points of symmetry. The phylum includes starfish, urchins, and sea cucumbers. They are the largest marine-only phylum.

CHORDATA

Last but not least, Chordata. Chordates are all animals that hace a dorsal nerve cord (that is, a complicated thing). It includes mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and more, and makes a large portion of the commonly known animals. 

That's all for today!

The poll:

https://forms.gle/CA594Cbz9SqA3k5h8

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