What are kingdoms? How do scientists classify living things? How do we divide the animal kingdom? What is the tree of life? If you know it all already, return to the Homepage or play one of our Games! Taking the animal kingdom as an example, we can see that it is split into two clear groups: Invertebrates - animals without a backbone. Search the Learning Zone.
Vertebrates are classified into fish, amphibians, reptiles , birds, and mammals. In contrast, invertebrates include sponges , coelenterates Ctenophora or comb jellies; and the Cnidaria or coral animals, true jellies, sea anemones, sea pens, and their allies , echinoderms starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers , worms, mollusks squid, octopus , snails , bivalves , and arthropods insects. One of the noticeable differences between vertebrates and invertebrates is their size.
Invertebrates, such as worms, shellfish, and insects, are small and slow-moving because they lack effective ways to support a large body and the muscles needed to power it. But there are a few exceptions, like the squid, which may be close to 15 meters 50 feet in size. Vertebrates have a versatile support system. As a result, vertebrates have the capability to develop faster and bigger bodies than invertebrates.
In contrast to invertebrates, vertebrates have a highly developed nervous system. With the help of their specialized nerve-fiber system, they can react very quickly to changes in their surroundings, giving them a competitive edge.
Compared to vertebrates animals with backbones , most invertebrates have simple nervous systems, and they behave almost entirely by instinct. This system works well most of the time, even though these animals are often incapable of learning from their mistakes. Moths , for example, repeatedly flutter around bright lights, even at the risk of getting burned. Notable exceptions are octopuses and their close relatives, which are thought to be among the most intelligent animals in the invertebrate world.
The feature uniting all chordates all vertebrates and some invertebrates is that at some stage in their lives, all have a flexible supporting rod, a notochord , that runs through the length of their bodies.
In a majority of chordates, the notochord is replaced by a series of interlocking bones — vertebrae — during early development. These presence of these bones is what determines whether an animal is a vertebrate has vertebrae or invertebrate does not have vertebrae. As multicellular organisms, invertebrates represent several steps along the road to the organizational complexity that makes most organisms what they are today. The first life evolved in the form of single cells in water.
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