I think it’s safe to say that most people in non-scientific or non-farming occupations pass their days without giving much thought to the existence of non-human life.
Oh, we feed and exercise our pets. We squeal at the sight of a spider in the house, or a snake in the flowerbed, but mostly we are concerned with human activitiy.
Stop and consider that, for all our preoccupation with ourselves, human beings make up a very tiny portion of life on earth. We are only one of about 1,750,000 species of living creatures sharing the planet.
Thanks to scientific classifications of taxonomy, we can pinpoint our place in the scheme of life.
Scientists classify life into five main Kingdoms:
Monera: bacteria and that sort of thing
Protista: simple organisms between or distinct from animals and plants
Fungi: mushrooms and friends
Plantae: Plants
Animalia: Animals
Each Kingdom has six main categories:
Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
Food for thought: for every one human being, there are about 1.5 million insects.
Human beings belong to the Animal Kingdom, along with dogs, cats, snails, worms, and insects.
For comparison purposes, here are the taxonomies of the animals in the photo:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Order: Carnivora
Family: Hominidae
Family: Felidae
Genus: Homo
Genus: Felis
Species: sapiens
Species: catus
One Response
I grew up in a Catholic household. I was an Altar boy and have studied in Rome and traveled around the world learning about our existence even climbing the great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt . We like to think of ourselves on a grand scale . But from the time of my church teachings I always knew something was wrong . For some reason I have always known I am a part of the earth . I am an animal . I do so many things just like all of the other animals . And my insides are no different than other animals . The only thing different is that I realize I know one day like all of the other animals I will die . But to say we are smarter than other animals would be wrong . Because they can live outside in conditions I would not be able to without some sort of shelter . I am an animal without a second thought !