What's in a name?

Taxonomy, the science how things are classified, is how animals are categorized and let us know what creatures we have already discovered. There are seven main categories, with the broadest listed first:

Kingdom

Phylum

Class

Order

Family

Genus 

Species

An easy way to remember this is Keep Pots Clean Or Family Gets Sick!

Kingdom

This is the most simplistic category. Some kingdoms include Plantae (plants), Animalia (animals), and Fungi (fungus). This way we can tell what ever thing we are looking at is an animal or  a plant.

Phylum

Phylum is the next category that lists a common characteristic of the animal. Most of the time, it whether or not the animal has some kind of backbone. Most creatures with backbones, like dogs, snakes, birds, and ourselves fall under the phylum known as Chordata. Animals without backbones, like mollusks, spiders, and butterflies, are put in the phylum Anthropoda.

Class

Class gets more specific by letting us know what kind of creature we are looking at. Examples of class are Mammalia (mammals), which contains animals that are covered with hair, have developed offspring that's not in eggs (except for a few special mammals), and produce milk to support their young, and Reptillia (reptiles), containing creatures that are cold blooded and their babies hatch from eggs. 

Order

With in each class is an order. Within the class Mammalia, there is the order of Rodenta (rodents like squirrels, mice, rats, and hamsters), Carnivora (carnivores or meat eaters like cats, dogs, and bears), Insectivora (insect eaters like moles and shrews), as well as Artidactyla (even toed hoofed animals like deer, antelopes, sheep, and hippos). The Primate order contains monkey, apes, lemurs, and ourselves. As you can see, it is getting more and more specific. 

Family

Family contains all the members of one type of animal. These animals all share a common feature and generally look kind of the same. All cats (Felidae family) have whiskers, all rabbits (Leporidae family) have long ears and long back legs. Within the Canis family includes wolves, coyotes, foxes, and the domestic dog.

Genus

Genus is more complex than family. For example is the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiars). This genus contains all the types of dogs that are out there in the world. All big cats like lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars belong to the Panthera genus.

Species

Species gives a very specific name for an animal. Both genus and species together creates an animals bionomen, or it's scientific name. So within the Panthera you have leo (lions), tigris (tigers), pardus (leopards), and onca (jaguar). Species names are commonly named after the location they are found, their color, or the person who found them. For example the okapi (Okapia johnstoni), it's species is named after the man that led the expedition that led to it's discovery. Any living things scientific name is written in italics, with it's Genus written first with a uppercase, followed by it's species in all lower case, like this: Genus species.

Below are some examples of taxonomy. We can tell by their classification that the animals are relative to one another. At one time, they shared a common ancestor.

Source:  Integrated Principles of  Zoology, 2006, Hickman et al.

The Encyclopedia of Animals, 2006, Per Christiansen

Double-Wattled Cassowary

The double-wattled cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) is a large flightless bird that lives in northeastern Australia and New Guinea. Although it can't fly away from it's predators, it protects itself by slashing out it's long 4 inch long claws. It can run about 30 miles per hour and can jump nearly five feet, making it one of the more dangerous animals in Australia. 

It uses it's big feet to chase small birds and mammals through the jungle it lives in.It also eats fruits, insects, fungi, and carrion. While it's claws help it catch prey and give it sure footing as it runs, it's feathers also help it speed through the forest. They are thick and dense, which protects the cassowary from getting stuck by thorns and bramble as well as keep it waterproof. The large knob on it's head, called a casque, helps it as well by allowing it to smash through twigs and branches. 

The casque grows as it ages. Young cassowary lack a casque, so they must stay with their mother for protection. Cassowaries lay around 3 to 5 bright green or black eggs in a nest made of mostly leaves. Chicks are brown and stripped, which helps them camouflage in the shady jungle.

The cassowary belongs to the taxonomic order known as Casuariiformes, where the emu and the cassowary are the only members. Taxonomy is the science of how animals are categorized. In order to keep track of all the animals out there, scientist list them in very specific order. It starts off very broad, listing whether its an animal, plant, fungus, or perhaps bacteria. It then starts to get more specific, such as whether the animal has a backbone, if it's a mammal, reptile, or bird. As classification gets more specific it get so specific to it's individual name, which is the long name after it's common name. It's scientific name, or bionomenclature, is always in Latin. This way every scientist in the world will be able to know what animal is being talked about. 

Source: The Encyclopedia of Animals, 2006, Per Christiansen