An animal is a complex, multicellular organism that belongs to the biological kingdom Animalia – the animal kingdom. Animals range from relatively simple organisms such as sponges and jellyfish to complex ones such as humans and elephants.
The largest animal ever known is the blue whale, which can be as long as 110 feet (that's longer than three school buses!) and weigh as much as 190 tons! On land, the African bush elephant is the biggest, weighing up to 12.25 tons.
The common animals most people know are only about 3% of the animal kingdom. When biologists look at animals, they find things that certain animals have in common.
People: Guinea Pigs Deserve Halloween Fun, Too! 7 Tiny Halloween Costumes that Are Too Cute to Handle
Let your guinea pig, rabbit, hedgehog or other small animal enjoy Halloween with one of these little costume made just for them Kelli Bender is the Pets Editor at PEOPLE. She has been working at ...
Guinea Pigs Deserve Halloween Fun, Too! 7 Tiny Halloween Costumes that Are Too Cute to Handle
The word animal comes from the Latin noun animal of the same meaning, which is itself derived from Latin animalis 'having breath or soul'. [5] The biological definition includes all members of the kingdom Animalia. [6]
animal, (kingdom Animalia), any of a group of multicellular eukaryotic organisms (i.e., as distinct from bacteria, their deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is contained in a membrane-bound nucleus).