Biology Animal Kingdom Worksheet

Can you help me understand this Biology question?

 

Exercise 5: The Animal Kingdom:

or Even if it looks like blob of jelly…..it may still be an animal!

If someone were to ask you what a giraffe looks like, you would most likely be able to bring an image to

mind, and then describe it to the person asking the question. Your mental image of the giraffe would most

likely be one that was visual; we human tend to rely on our eyes and the things we can see directly. But

these direct visual observations are not the only ones that are available to us when we describe an

organism. We could also describe an organism in terms of the way it feels, the way it smells or the

sounds that it makes. But in the end, we all think we know what an animal looks like and how we would

identify one.

It turns out, that identification of animals, and many other organisms is not necessarily straightforward. In

the last exercise you spent time finding and identifying organisms that are invisible to our naked eyes and

which fell into a variety of different classification categories. In this lab exercise, you will find that even

when visible, and when called by a name that we think of as familiar, it is not just how something looks on

the outside that determines how it is classified.

INTRODUCTION

Look at the two organisms in the pictures below. As a biologist, it would be your job to identify

and classify organisms such as these. But where would you start? Could you tell simply based

on their looks whether these would be classified as plant, animal, fungus or protist?

Many of the organisms that we call animals are obvious to most of us. Many of the species that

biologists have named belong to the animal group because they are usually easy to see, and

they have been studied extensively over the past several hundred years. However, there are

some organisms that defy classification simply by the way that they look. To classify some

organisms we must look beyond the surface.

What is an animal?

The word “animal” comes from the Latin word animal, (for which animalia is the plural) and

means “vital breath or soul”. Animals form a major group within the domain Eukarya, the

kingdom Animalia. Most animals are defined by sharing the same group of characteristics:

• Multi-cellular: Animals are composed of eukaryotic cells that have a plasma membrane

surrounding the cells, but no cell walls. Most animals (although not all) are multi-cellular,

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that is, they are made up from more than one cell, and in most cases, the different cells

carry out different functions for the organism.

• Heterotrophic: Animals consume their food, feeding on pre-made organic materials to

obtain nutrients for growth and development. Most animals feed by ingestion; they take

in whole parts of other organisms and digest them inside their bodies.

• Exhibit movement: Most animals are capable of motion due to the presence of nervous

and muscle tissue.

• Exhibit embryonic development: Animals go through a process of development or

change from their early life as an embryo, to their final adult form.

In order to identify and classify animals, we need to look at characteristics that would permit us

to organize them into groups. Ideally, we would like to look for characteristics that are common

to the largest number of organisms, and then to find characteristics which fit progressively fewer

and fewer of the organisms in question. These sets of characteristics could then be used to

construct a dichotomous key (similar in concept to the one used in last week’s exercise) that

could be used to identify newly discovered animals. In this exercise, you will be looking at

certain features of body organization that provide clues to the evolutionary ancestry of the

animals. These features include

• Cellular organization
• Number of tissue layers in the embryo
• The body plan symmetry
• Cephalization
• Segmentation
• Type of digestive tract
• Type of body cavity
• The type of skeleton (if any)
• The presence of jointed appendages
• Presence of notochord, dorsal hollow nerve chord and post-anal tail

Cellular Organization

Animals differ in their degree of organization and complexity. The very simplest animals, those

from phylum Porifera, are composed of cells that are only loosely interconnected, but can exist

and function independently even if they serve a specific function within the organism. In other

animals, the cells come together to form tissues, groups of cells that are similar in structure and

function and which work together to perform a specific activity. All animals except those in

phylum Porifera have defined tissues.

All animals except the Porifera and the Cnidarians have tissues that work together to perform

specific activities forming structures called organs. Organs consist of two or more different

types of tissues organized into these units that have a characteristic size and shape. Example of

organs in humans would be heart, brain, lung and skin.

Embryonic Tissue Layers

The embryonic tissues layers of an animal are also known as germ layers and give rise to all of

the tissues and organs in the adult animal. During development, the zygote (the first cell formed

from the union of an egg and sperm cell) develops in such a way that different layers of tissues

are formed. The innermost layer is the endoderm that gives rise to organs such as the digestive

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tract and lungs; the mesoderm is a middle layer that gives rise to muscles, the circulatory and

skeletal system; the ectoderm is the outer layer which forms the nervous system and the

epidermis of the organism.

The Porifera do not have tissues, and thus do not have these layers. The Cnidarians have only

two germ layers, ectoderm and endoderm. All other animals have all three germ layers.

Body Plan

An organism’s body plan is the blueprint for the way the body of the organism is laid out. An

organism’s symmetry, the number of body segments and the number of limbs are all part of its

body plan.

Symmetry describes the layout of the body parts on either side of a dividing line or plane.

Asymmetrical body plan: the

animal body cannot be divided

into two equal halves along any

one plane.

Radial body plan: any plane

passing through the center of the