Zoology topics

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The word animal means “air” or “breath”, it comes from the Latin anima. From that meaning, the Romans use “breathe of life,” or “soul.” consequently, anima came to signify an animated, moving, perceiving, and reacting creature. That remains a good working explanation of the organisms we call animals.

Scientists assign animals as multicellular heterotrophs. Hetero means “other,” and “troph” refers to how an organism gets its nutrition. Animals need to obtain their nourishment by ingesting or absorbing other living beings. Plants get their energy from photosynthesis by sunlight, plants are known as autotrophs.

The significant differences between animals and plants are their methods of obtaining nutrition. Plants are stationary; their source of energy is sunlight and their other needs are minerals, water, and carbon dioxide—all of that are in the air and the ground they grow on. While animals have to find specific kind of food and it has to come from something that was alive.

Most animals must keep seeking for food; they had develop structural systems of muscles and skeletons that facilitate movement and nervous systems. Since they had to be able to distinguish objects of nutrition also adjust to the different environments they are in. These internal systems are not only for sensing, but as well as moving quickly to capture their prey. It is a fact that many marine animals are stationary, anchored to the ocean floor or to some object. However, most of these form of animals, even though submissively waiting for their next meal to swim along. They use their nervous system and structural system to sense and snatch their food.

If the prey is an animal, it uses its nervous and structural systems to steer clear of being eaten. The issue of who eats and who is eaten came to form an important part of the animal way of life.