5.1 [ Taxonomy, Binomial Nomenclature ]

     There have been well over two million different animal and plant species that have inhabited the earth. So having a system called taxonomy to help categorize and sort them all is very handy. Taxonomy is defined from dictionary.com as the science dealing with the description, identification, naming and classification of organisms. Our current biological system of classification was created by Carl Linnaeus. His system was focused mainly on an organisms physical and structural features, he created rules for naming plants and animals called binomial nomenclature. Binomial nomenclature is defined as a method of naming organisms by using two names, the genus name and the species name. An example of taxonomy would be the red panda so then its binomial name would be Ailurus fulgens.

Kingdom : Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ailuridae
Genus: Ailurus
Species: Fulgens

       Taxonomy starts from a very big category and slowly gets smaller so we may identify an animals relatives and general family until we get to the exact species. For example you may think a red panda and a giant panda are of the same family but they are actually farther apart then that. The giant pandas kingdom is Amimalia, its Phylum is Chordata, its class is Mammalia and its Order is Carnivora. Those are where the red panda and the giant panda are related. The giant pandas family is Ursidae, its Genus is Ailuropoda and its species is Melanoleuca. They are related but are far distant cousins of each other.

 

Biology 20-30. N.p.: Nelson, n.d. Print.

"Taxonomy." Taxonomy. Dictionary.com. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Taxonomy.

   Glatston, Angela. "Red Panda." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_panda, Web. 21 Apr. 2011.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_panda."Giant Panda." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

     Giant_panda, 19 Apr. 2011. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/
     wiki/Giant_panda>.