When you are going to appear for an important examination, how would you prepare? If you try to read everything that comes your way, you would not be able to secure the best results. Studying something in a structured and orderly fashion makes it easier for comprehension. Ordering and classifying animals makes it easier to study them. Animal classification is the process of identifying, naming and organizing animal species into groups. The branch of science that deals with animal classification is known as taxonomy.
Animals can be classified into two main groups: vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates have backbones, while invertebrates do not. In all, there are more than 8 million animal species in the Kingdom Animalia and most of them are invertebrates.
Each living organism is classified into Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. There are five kingdoms. The two main kingdoms are animals and plants. Animalia includes animals and plantae, plants. The other kingdoms are Protista that includes single-celled organisms, Fungi that includes yeast, moulds, mushrooms etc., and Monera that include Bacteria.
Some scientists say that there are five kingdoms, while for some others there are six. Other than Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, and Protista, they consider Archaea and Bacteria as other different kingdoms. For some other scientists, Monera is the fifth one, which includes Archaea and Bacteria.
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