Welcome back to Homeschool @ the Utica Zoo! RISE & SHINE!! Welcome back to Homeschool @ the Utica Zoo! Todays topic: Animal Classifications

What does classification mean? When certain animals are grouped together according to their characteristics, that is called classification. Kind of like how you might group your clothes together (socks with socks, pajamas with pajamas, etc.) How about kitchen items?; you wouldn’t put your forks in the cabinet with the plates right? So why is it so important to classify animals? If scientists did not Group together the millions of species that exist, it would be impossible for us to keep track of them. It is not as simple as it seems however – there is a process to grouping these animals (which includes us humans) This process has seven categories (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, order, Family, genus, species) An easy way to remember the categories: “King Philip came over for great soup” This is called taxonomy EXAMPLE

So what is all this “King Philip blah blah blah…” anyways? Each category has a specific meaning to help link animals together or separate them by examining their similarities/differences. The main categories that we are going to discuss start from class down to species. Within the class category, there are two separate groups (invertebrates and vertebrates; which do you belong to?) There are five different types of vertebrates… After that, there are 8 different types of invertebrates… Porifera (sponges) Cnidaria (jellyfish, coral) Platyhelminthes (tapeworm, planaria) Nematoda (earthworms, leeches) Mollusca (clams, snails) Arthropoda (spiders, crabs) Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchin)

Animal Classes Every animal in the world belongs to one of the many classes. The most commonly know classes are those that vertebrates belong to (animals with a backbone) Amphibians Reptiles Mammals Fish And Birds These are part of phylum chordata (remember this by thinking of spinal chord) And before phylum comes Kingdom (which for all living animals is Animalia) See the example to the right to show a humans taxon compared to an ostrich’s.

Animal Classes Continued… Lets talk about invertebrates now… As mentioned before there are 8 main types. Today we will just talk mainly about arthropods, as those are what we commonly see in our area. Examples: bees, spiders, lady bugs, etc. Be sure to visit us for our Invertebrates lesson, to learn more about each specific group of invertebrate.

Quick Vertebrate Classification Review Fish: cold-blooded aquatic animals that breathe using gills and lack limbs with digits (fingers and toes) Amphibians: cold-blooded animals including frogs and salamanders that also use gills when they are born in water and then continue onto growing limbs and lungs in order to live on land. Reptiles: cold-blooded animals including turtles, snakes, and lizards that are usually scaled or covered in boney plates and breathe using lungs Birds: warm-blooded egg-laying animals that are covered in feathers, have a beak, and lack teeth Mammals: warm-blooded animals (including YOU) covered in fur or hair, that breathe using lungs and feed their young using mammary glands