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Animal has been listed as a level-2 vital article in Science. If you can improve it, please do. This page has been rated as C-Class.

This article was on the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive for the week of December 15, 2007.

This subject is featured in the Outline of zoology#Animals (by common name), which is incomplete and needs further development. That page, along with the other outlines on Wikipedia, comprise Wikipedia's Outline of Knowledge, which also serves as the table of contents or site map of Wikipedia.

This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

WikiProject Animals (Rated C-Class, Top-importance) AnimalsWikipedia:WikiProject AnimalsTemplate:WikiProject Animalsanimal articles Animals portal v • d • e Animal is within the scope of WikiProject Animals, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to animals and zoology. For more information, visit the project page.  C  This article has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale.  Top  This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. WikiProject Animals To-do: edit · history · watch · purge Here are some Open Tasks : Copyedit: Dog Improve: Animal, Zoology, Invertebrate, Vertebrate, Ethology, Photoperiodism, Tool use by animals, Omnivore Requests: Cultural transmission in animals Mammals: Grizzlar Bear, Jarkov Mammoth, Townsend's big-eared baty Invertebrates: Shingle urchin, Velvet mite, Fingernail clam Fishes: Pike eel, Spotted sucker, Berycidae, Trichonotidae Amphibians: Cave salamander, Nightfrog Stubs: Stud, Candling, Crawling, Growling, Hatchling, Litter, Crossbreed, Pack hunter, Personal grooming, Protobird, Spoor, Territorial marking, Worming Nominate and vote: Science collaboration of the month, Article Improvement Drive, WikiProject Animals Collaboration WikiProject Tree of Life (Rated C-Class, Top-importance) Tree of LifeWikipedia:WikiProject Tree of LifeTemplate:WikiProject Tree of Lifetaxonomic articles Biology portal v • d • e This article is within the scope of WikiProject Tree of Life, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of taxonomy and the phylogenetic tree of life on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.  C  This article has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale.  Top  This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Version 1.0 Editorial Team     (Rated C-Class) This article has been reviewed by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. This article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. Additional information: C This article has been rated as C-Class on the assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale. This article is a vital article. This article is one of the core set of articles every encyclopedia should have.

edit · history · watch · refresh  To-do list for Animal:
Here are some tasks you can do: Copyedit: Lophotrochozoa Characteristics Verify: Inline references required in the following sections: Etymology Done Characteristics Done Structure Reproduction and development Origin and fossil record Groups of animals Deuterostomes Ecdysozoa Platyzoa Done Lophotrochozoa Done Model organisms History of classification Expand: Lead (see WP:LS) History of classification
Priority 1 (top)

Contents 1 Size errors remain 2 "The word "animal" comes from the Latin word animals" 3 Bad article 4 Earliest animals pushed back to the Cryogenian (635 MYA) 5 species are not proper nouns 6 Pantera Tigris 7 Lede change 8 Second Largest Animal Phylum? 9 Are all animals motile or not?

[edit] Size errors remain

The article ANIMAL still has size errors. Nematomorpha and Acanthocephala are not microscopic.Zylon 00:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

FISH ARE NOT ANIMALS!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vulcurdil (talk • contribs) 21:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I created a new article called "Safari Cards." I'm sure some of you owned those in the 1970s, so please feel free to edit it.

Also the article on Dunkleosteus claims the size was 3m not 10m. I'm no expert so I wont fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.93.75 (talk) 07:28, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "The word "animal" comes from the Latin word animals"

Do we really need this? --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 08:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Presumably some readers want to know the origin of a word. The question of whether we should mention the origin of words in Wikipedia, or just rely on Wiktionary to supply that information, is a general one best addressed at a higher level (Wikipedia:Village pump, perhaps). -- Donald Albury 13:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we should add the fact that "The word "animal" comes from the Latin word animal" because many other articles on wikipedia describe the origin of words that the article concerns for instance the article on Anarchism says that the word Anarchism is derived from the Greek words a-without and archons-rulers and the article on Atheism states that the word English word atheism is derived from the French word athéisme which was in turn derived from the Greek word ἄθεος.--Fang 23 (talk) 13:21, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought it came from anima not animal. St. Jimmy 21:36, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Surely the correct way to express it is along the lines of... "The word 'animal' is Latin in origin", or "the word 'animal' is taken from Latin" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.202.24 (talk) 15:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Given the Latin word is "animale" or "animalis" (gender neutral) the article was wrong anyway. It's fixed and cited so it shouldn't be an issue. Justin ^chat 21:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The word animal is from the Latin "animal." The nominative singular of the Latin word has the same spelling as in English. Please fix or delete the etymology altogether. Schaffman (talk) 12:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bad article

This is a bad article. One needs a degree in Biology and one in Latin to read it. I just want to know in English where various animals fit in the classification. There is a picture of a tiger ther in the box. Where do tigers fit in?--58.165.128.120 (talk) 05:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You have a point, to some degree. I am no biologist. How many people search "animal" when they want to know where a tiger fits in. Why not just go to tiger? You are right in that some parts are incomprehensible to non-experts. But it is simply too inconvenient to label each family, genus, order, etc., with a brief definition (i.e.: mustilidae: otters, weasels, badgers, and...). I think.--76.16.75.236 (talk) 00:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

One problem is that there are a lot of technical terms that could just as easily be replaced with layman's terms, and they're all wikilinked rather than followed by a brief layman's definition. Nobody should be expected to read another article every three words in order to understand the text. Dinoguy2 (talk) 03:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand why this article is so incomplete. There are over 35 phylium in Kingdom Animalia. This article does not even mention the most common phylium, Phylum Chordata and it's subphylum Vertebrata. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.143.211 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Earliest animals pushed back to the Cryogenian (635 MYA)

Love et al (2009) "Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period" Nature 457, 718-721 doi:10.1038/nature07673 Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] species are not proper nouns

A dog is a common noun. Lassie is a proper noun. Do not capitalize common nouns. Yes, even when you are interested in discussing the class. The only common noun animal names that should be capitalized are those that derive from proper nouns: "Virginia creeper" for instance. This is the norm for the written language. Is Chicago, AP, NYT, Britanica etc. style. It is right out of normal textbooks. Wikipedia is forwarding a peculiar usage driven by select groups, not yet accepted in general writing. English is not GERMAN! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.57.163 (talk) 13:06, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Pantera Tigris

In that box to the right, at the top of the page, underneath that where it lists the animals shown, it said, "Pantera tigris (cordate)" As far as I know, cordates are aquadic animals, and it should be pretty darn obvious that Pantera Tigris refers to a tiger. Come on, people! I wonder if there's any more errors like that in this article...? Anyway, I changed 'cordate' to 'tiger', to avoid further confusion. Cloudy fox 001 (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Tigers are vertebrates, and all vertebrates are Chordates. The images are there to show an example from selected phylums, like molluscs or arthropods. Panthera tigris does not refer to anything, it's the scientific name of the specie. 'Tiger' is an English common name for the same specie. AtikuX (talk) 09:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Lede change

I think we should change the lead photo/collage. The animals in the collage have too simliar colorations. I think we should not only have animals from different phylums but also ones with different colors. I'll be willing to create a new collage of animals with different colors. Anybody object? Bobisbob2 (talk) 17:03, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Second Largest Animal Phylum?

The article claims in different places that the Nematoda and the Mollusca are each the second largest animal phylum. At least one of these claims is wrong. Can we fix this? 216.156.120.62 (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, this was previously brought up on October 15th, but no one has addressed it yet. I would change it myself, but I don't have access to a reliable source. 12.12.33.153 (talk) 04:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Colin Tudge (The Variety of Life), states that there are "about 100,000 known species [of molusc] [p226]", and that "about 20,000 species of nematode have been described, but the true species list should probably run to many millions [p202]", so I guess the jury is still out! FredV (talk) 14:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

We shouldn't be calling something "the second largest phylum", since we don't know for sure what is, and it depends entirely on how you define species. Just say second largest in terms of described species or something. Richard001 (talk) 07:07, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Are all animals motile or not?

The introduction states "most animals are motile," and then a few paragraphs later in the Characteristics section, it's stated that "all animals are motile" as a defining characteristic. I'd fix it myself, but I don't know which is correct.

Any biologists out there care to weigh in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Severoon (talk • contribs) 01:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)