Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms comprising
the biological kingdom Animalia (/ˌænɪˈmeɪliə/[4]). With few exceptions,
animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to
move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells,
the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that
they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5
million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million
are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has
been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. Animal
body lengths range from 8.5 μm (0.00033 in) to 33.6 m (110 ft). They have
complex ecologies and interactions with each other and their environments,
forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology,
and the study of animal behaviour is known as ethology.
The animal kingdom is divided into five major clades,
namely Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Bilateria. Most living animal
species belong to the clade Bilateria, a highly proliferative clade whose members
have a bilaterally symmetric and significantly cephalised body plan, and the vast
majority of bilaterians belong to two large clades: the protostomes, which includes
organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and
the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the
latter of which contains the vertebrates. The much
smaller basal phylum Xenacoelomorpha have an uncertain position within
Bilateria.
Animals first appeared in the fossil record in the late Cryogenian period and
diversified in the subsequent Ediacaran period in what is known as the Avalon
explosion. Earlier evidence of animals is still controversial; the sponge-like
organism Otavia has been dated back to the Tonian period at the start of
the Neoproterozoic, but its identity as an animal is heavily contested.[5] Nearly all
modern animal phyla first appeared in the fossil record as marine species during
the Cambrian explosion, which began around 539 million years ago (Mya), and
most classes during the Ordovician radiation 485.4 Mya. Common to all living
animals, 6,331 groups of genes have been identified that may have arisen from a
single common ancestor that lived about 650 Mya during the Cryogenian period.
Historically, Aristotle divided animals into those with blood and those
without. Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical biological classification for
animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded
into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the
multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-
celled organisms no longer considered animals. In modern times, the biological
classification of animals relies on advanced techniques, such as molecular
phylogenetics, which are effective at demonstrating the evolutionary relationships
between taxa.
Humans make use of many other animal species for food (including meat, eggs,
and dairy products), for materials (such as leather, fur, and wool), as pets and
as working animals for transportation, and services. Dogs, the
first domesticated animal, have been used in hunting, in security and in warfare, as
have horses, pigeons and birds of prey; while other terrestrial and aquatic
animals are hunted for sports, trophies or profits. Non-human animals are also an
important cultural element of human evolution, having appeared in cave
arts and totems since the earliest times, and are frequently featured
in mythology, religion, arts, literature, heraldry, politics, and sports.
