Lesson 2 ·Class 9 · Five Kingdom Classification · Flow Lab
Climbing the Taxonomic Ladder
Seven ranks, from broadest to narrowest.
Follow one animal — the tiger — down the ladder from the broadest group to the narrowest.
→ → → → → →
🌍 Step 1 of 7 · Kingdom: Animalia
The broadest rank. Everything that is multicellular, eukaryotic and feeds on others. Millions of species.
Kingdom → Phylum → Class → Order → Family → Genus → Species
Free play — step through the process at your own pace, and move the slider to see what changes. Switch to when you're ready to test yourself.
As you go down, the number of organisms falls but the number of shared characters rises.
What this lesson covers
What you do
- Notice that at every step you are ADDING a shared feature, not removing one.
Challenges to clear
- Advance to the rank that separates mammals from all other chordates.
- Reach the rank that gives the first word of the scientific name.
- Climb all the way down to the species.
The task
Follow one animal — the tiger — down the ladder from the broadest group to the narrowest.
What this lesson covers
- Kingdom: Animalia — The broadest rank. Everything that is multicellular, eukaryotic and feeds on others. Millions of species.
- Phylum: Chordata — Narrowing to animals with a notochord at some stage of life.
- Class: Mammalia — Chordates with hair, mammary glands and a four-chambered heart.
- Order: Carnivora — Mammals with teeth adapted for tearing flesh.
- Family: Felidae — The cats — retractile claws and a distinctive skull.
- Genus: Panthera — The big cats that can roar — lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar.
- Species: tigris — Only the tiger. Written in full as Panthera tigris — genus first, then species.
- Kingdom → Phylum → Class → Order → Family → Genus → Species
Hint
As you go down, the number of organisms falls but the number of shared characters rises.