ANIMALS (Part 1 of 4)

Cheetah

DEFINITION: 1 any living organism, excluding plants and bacteria: most animals can move about independently and have specialized sense organs that enable them to react quickly to stimuli: animals do not have cell walls, nor do they make food by photosynthesis 2 any such organism other than a human being, esp. a mammal or, often, any four-footed creature 3 a brutish, debased, or inhuman person 4 [Colloq.] a person, thing, concept, etc. thought of as a kind or type [today's athlete is another animal altogether]

All living things are divided into two main kingdoms the animal and plant kingdoms and two or three other kingdoms that include bacteria, blue-green algae, and one-celled creatures with definite nuclei. What is the difference between a horse, for example, and grass? A horse moves about in the pasture eating grass. It trots toward you when you offer it a lump of sugar and shows pleasure when you stroke its head. The grass, however, is rooted to one place. It does not respond behaviourally to people or to the horse in any way.

Animals Move About and Sense Surroundings

Adult animals move freely from place to place during at least one phase of their life. Plants usually cannot move unless a force, such as the wind, causes them to move.

Most animals move freely from place to place and can sense their surroundings; that is, they can taste, smell, hear, see, and touch. Certain simple animals, such as the corals and barnacles, spend most of their lives fastened to one spot, but they are able to swim freely when they are young. Even these rooted animals have parts that move in order to capture food. Plants, however, cannot shift about at their own will. They react to heat, light, chemicals, and touch, but their responses are involuntary and automatic, quite different from those of animals.

All living things are made of cells. The walls of plant and animal cells are different.

Cellulose, complex carbohydrate consisting of 3,000 or more glucose units; basic structural component of plant cell walls; 90% of cotton and 50% of wood is cellulose; most abundant of all naturally occurring organic compounds; indigestible by humans; can be digested by herbivores, such as cows and horses, because they retain it long enough for digestion by micro organisms present in their digestive systems; also digestible by termites; processed to produce papers and fibres; chemically modified to yield plastics, photographic film, and rayon; other derivatives used as adhesives, explosives, thickening agents, and in moisture-proof coatings.

All living things are made up of cells of protoplasm. They may consist of a single cell, as does an amoeba, or billions of cells, as do trees and horses. The cell wall of a plant is composed of a woody material called cellulose. No true animal contains cellulose. Animal cells are bounded by a membrane composed chiefly of fat and protein.

Green plants make their own food. With the aid of the green substance called chlorophyll, they use the energy in sunlight to change carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and other food materials. No true animal contains chlorophyll.

Animals must eat, either directly or indirectly, the food manufactured by members of the plant kingdom. A horse cannot stand in the sun and wait for its body to make fat and proteins. It must move about the pasture in search of green grass. Even meat eaters for example, lions live on animals, such as zebras, which in turn subsist on plants.

The Variety of Animal Life

More than a million different kinds of animals inhabit the Earth. The exact number is not known, for new kinds are continually being discovered. They live in the seas, from the surface down to the black depths where no ray of light penetrates. On mountaintops and in deserts, in mud and in hot pools some form of animal life may be found.

Animals are infinitely varied in form, size, and habits. The smallest animals are bits of protoplasm that can be seen only with a microscope. The largest, the blue whales, may be more than 100 feet (30 meters) long and weigh 300,000 pounds (136,000 kilograms).

Some of the most familiar animals, such as dogs, birds, frogs, and fish, have a backbone and a central nervous system. They are called vertebrates, meaning animals with backbones. Animals without backbones are called invertebrates and include arthropods, worms, molluscs, and many other groups. Most of the vertebrates and many invertebrates have a head where sense organs are concentrated and have legs, wings, or fins for locomotion. Vertebrates and many invertebrates, such as the arthropods and worms, have bilateral, or two-sided, symmetry. This means that they have two mirror-image sides (a right side and a left side), distinct upper and lower surfaces of the body, and a distinct front and rear.

Some invertebrates, such as jellyfish, sea anemones, and starfish, display radial symmetry, in which the parts of the body are arranged around a central axis, similar to a wheel.

Animals with radial symmetry live in marine or freshwater aquatic environments. Some drift with the currents, unable to swim in any definite direction. Others become attached to a solid object by one end and float with the mouth end upright. Tentacles arranged in a circle around the mouth sweep in food particles and ward off enemies.

One-celled animals called protozoans live in fresh and salt water. Many are shapeless creatures and cannot swim toward their food. They move along by squeezing out a finger like projection from the body. This is called a pseudopod, from the Greek meaning "false foot." The pseudopod fastens to something solid, and the rest of the body flows into the fastened projection. The amoeba also moves in this manner. One-celled animals are very small. They are single blobs of liquid enclosed in a thin membrane and as such cannot attain a large size or a very definite shape.

Animals with Outside Skeletons and Feet

Molluscs have soft bodies that are not divided into specialized sections such as head, thorax, and abdomen. Many molluscs are enclosed in hard, hinged shells. Snails have a single large, fleshy foot located on the stomach side.

The heads of the octopus and the squid are surrounded by a circle of eight or ten tentacles that act as arms and feet. Oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops all have a single axe-shaped foot which they burrow into sand.

Most molluscs do not move around efficiently. Oysters fasten themselves to something solid and settle down for life, letting food drift to them. Scallops may move in zigzag leaps by clapping their shells together.

Joint-Legged Animals

Arthropod, animal of the phylum Arthropoda comprising invertebrates with external skeleton, segmented body, and jointed appendages.

Joint-legged animals, or arthropods, have bodies divided into segments that have specialized functions. These animals also have many jointed legs. Most arthropods are covered with a jointed skeleton made of a horny material. This outside skeleton is lighter than the shells of the molluscs The legs and muscles and many organs of the arthropod are attached to the outside skeleton.

The arthropods include insects, lobsters, crabs, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, and spiders. They can run, jump, swim, and crawl. Some live mostly on land, while others live mostly in water. Many of the insects have wings and can fly. Arthropods inhabit most of the Earth's environments, from the poles to the tropics, and are found in fresh and marine water and in terrestrial habitats.

How Back boned Animals Move

Vertebrates move through water and air and over the ground with great speed and skill. Birds, with their feathered wings, are the best fliers. Fish are the best swimmers. However, other vertebrates also can fly and swim. Bats fly on wings of membrane like skin. The flying squirrel glides on a broad membrane between its legs. The flying fish soars over the surface of the ocean by using its fins. Neither the fish nor the squirrel can soar great distances, however.

Some turtles swim with paddle like front legs. Some water birds can swim underwater with their wings. The mud skipper and walking catfish are fishes that walk on mud by pulling themselves along on their front fins.

Frogs, kangaroos, various cats, and some fishes are superior jumpers. Salmon leap up waterfalls when they travel from the sea to their home streams to lay their eggs. Tarpon, swordfish, and sailfish make great leaps out of the water when pursuing their prey or trying to escape an enemy.

Breathing

Animals breathe in different ways:

• Some animals, like amoeba and sponges, let oxygen move through their cell walls.
• Fish and tadpoles breathe with their gills.
• Insects bring air in through pores, or holes, called spiracles.
• Mammals, birds, and reptiles breathe with lungs.

All animals must take in oxygen in order to change food into a form that the body can use. One-celled animals that live in water absorb oxygen directly through their membranes. The sponge is a very simple many-celled animal. The surface of a sponge is covered with millions of tiny pores. Water bearing dissolved oxygen and minute food particles flows through the pores and out of the opening at the top of the sponge.

Fish and tadpoles breathe by means of gills. Insects and caterpillars take air into the body through breathing pores called spiracles.

Mammals, birds, and reptiles obtain oxygen from the air. They take it into the lungs, and the oxygen passes through membranes in the lungs into particles called red blood cells. The bloodstream then carries the oxygen to all parts of the body. Amphibians have lungs, but they also have thin, moist skins that absorb oxygen directly.

Reproduction

Sea squirt, a tunicate or saclike marine animal, so called from its habit of ejecting water when touched; belongs to the phylum Chordata.

Hydra, primitive water animal of the class Hydrozoa and the genus Hydra.

All animals reproduce their own kind. One of the most primitive forms of reproduction is by fission, in which the individual organism divides to produce a replica of itself. Some animals, such as sea squirts, reproduce by budding: lumps appear along a branchlike organ and develop into young sea squirts. Sea squirts, sponges, corals, and other creatures that bud often remain together and form large colonies. The hydra also reproduces by budding, but in time the young bud separates and goes off to live alone.

Most animals reproduce by means of eggs from the female that are fertilized by sperm from the male. The eggs of some species are deposited in a nest or in some other manner before hatching. Most species of mammal and some species of reptile and fish bear their young alive, the fertilized eggs being retained within the body of the female.

The types of reproductive behaviour among animals are almost as varied as the kinds of animals themselves. Some species, such as most insects and turtles, deposit their eggs and give them no further attention. In colonies of the social insects, such as ants and bees, a single female lays all of the eggs, and workers provide care and nourishment for the developing young in the nest. The females of some reptiles, such as the king cobra and the blue-tailed skink, and amphibians, such as the marble salamander, stay with their clutch of eggs until they hatch but provide no protection or nourishment for the young. Some fish guard their young after they are born. Crocodilians protect the eggs before hatching and the young for several months afterwards. Many birds provide not only protection but also nourishment for the developing young. Mammals, which feed their young with milk produced by the mother, provide care for their young much longer than do other classes of animals.