Talk:Animal

Problem with main picture

While I do think it's a great idea that you give pictures of the wide variety of organisms that can be classified as "animals" I don't recognize over half of those animals pictured there. Is there anyway that you can provide a key or a caption that gives the name of each animal? The same sort of thing is done for articles on cities or countries where a variety of photos are in the main picture and each told a caption for what the photo is. quixoto (talk) 09:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

If you click on the picture, it will take you to the image file description article. The "description" section contains a composite array breakdown of the image. By clicking on a sub-image here, you will link to the image file for that image, which contains an (often very brief) description, frequently including further links. FredV (talk) 09:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Error in Dunkleosteus image caption

Th caption on the right hand side of the page under a rendering of Dunkleosteus, incorrectly reads: "Dunkleosteus was a gigantic, 10-foot-long (3.0 m) prehistoric fish.[39]"

Either this is not true, or the Wikipedia page for Dunkleosteus is incorrect, stating: "...measured 10 meters, which is about 33 feet."

This should be corrected.

Orphankill (talk) 00:19, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you for reporting this. -- Donald Albury 10:42, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Where do animals come from?

NYT: From Single Cells, a Vast Kingdom Arose by Carl Zimmer. Overview with links to a lot of papers. ^walk victor falk ^talk 10:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Animal Synonymous with Metazoa?

Is Animalia synonymous with Metazoa? I believe it may only refer to Animals with differentiated tissues (i.e. discluding sponges). I may be incorrect so I have not changed it yet.Ollyoxenfree (talk) 17:58, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

In every formulation I've seen, sponges of various clades are all included in Metazoa. Some authors group them with placozoans into Parazoa, but that doesn't look like it's going to hold. --Danger (talk) 18:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

The animals with true tissues are placed in the EUmetazoa ('proper animals'), implying that there is some larger, more inclusive group of less similar Metazoa containing it. This contains the sponges. 128.61.115.128 (talk) 20:40, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Animalia and Metazoa needs to be defined better. Etymology needs expansion. --J. D. Redding 01:12, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

"AnimalsRelativeNumbers.png" graphic

In the "AnimalsRelativeNumbers.png" graphic, there are 12 colored sections on the pie chart, but there are only 11 items listed in the legend. These 11 listed items appear to correspond to the first 11 sections of the pie chart, in clockwise order starting at 12 o'clock. The large blue section (75% of the total) does not appear to be labeled. I am confused - should the legend include a 12th item, and if so, what is it? If not, then shouldn't the 11 listed items take up 100% of the pie chart, not merely 25%? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mister Sharkey (talk • contribs) 19:56, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Welp, I finally got around to fixing the shading in this image. Should be clearer now. mgiganteus1 (talk) 20:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

"converting sunlight"

I believe this sentence in the article is not quite right:

  "Plants use this energy to convert sunlight into simple sugars "

It might instead read:

  Plants use this energy to convert CO2 and H2O into simple sugars  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pdupont (talk • contribs) 16:17, 25 August 2011 (UTC) 

That's an excellent point -- you're right; it's a bit misleading to say that the sunlight is converted into sugar. I've gone ahead and made the change, though using slightly different wording than you suggested (mainly because CO2 and H2O are mentioned in the next sentence, and it seemed awkward to mention them twice in such close proximity). --Smeazel (talk) 10:47, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

"Could be a better/more inclusive article"

For starters, there seem to be way too many photos of invertebrates on the main display. And why is there not a single picture of any of the primates? Or even of a homo sapien? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.107.212.152 (talk) 13:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The simple answer is that only a small minority of animals are vertebrates. With three out of the eighteen sub-images (eel; blue jay; tiger), the vertebrates are already greatly over-represented. However, this is, of course, a human encyclopaedia so bias towards our tiny twig on the tree of life is understandable. I think the author of the composite image deliberately avoided excessive primate parochialism (and I'm on his side - though I understand your point of view). FredV (talk) 14:33, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Newt lung cell image: over-hasty RV?

I looked at the Commons page to check the original caption, and RV'd a recent change according to what I found. However, the NIH's (original owner's) text doesn't contain that wording; I may have been relying on something not so reliable after all. Can anybody take this further, perhaps with a new reference? --Old Moonraker (talk) 11:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Newt image

The cell looks like it's in metaphase. Info on cell cycle here. The original owner does say that the image is of early anaphase but not all the chromosomes are on the meiotic plate yet, meaning it's in late metaphase. I think my correction was right.

Tag on simple statement about the Cambrian explosion.

What's desired there? Is it someone contesting evolution? That it is called what it is, and is an accepted fact of modern science shourd suffice but a selection of the references from the article could certainly be supplied if that were apropos. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 11:54, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I removed the tag, as the observation that most phyla appeared in the Cambrian explosion is cited later in the article, and the MOS normally calls for not using citations in the lede. -- Donald Albury 12:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! 72.228.177.92 (talk) 13:29, 1 February 2012 (UTC)