Classification
You can sort and classify anything, and with about 1.7 million species of plant, animal and micro organism, so far discovered, scientists need a way to organize and name them! Modern classification attempts to put structure and order to the huge amount of information that has been collected on different organisms. This is done by giving each one a unique name and sorting them into hierarchies of increasingly exclusive (getting smaller) groups (or taxa) based on how similar, and therefore, how closely related they are. The taxa for the Animal Kingdom and a worked example (the Lion) are shown below:
So the smallest group (the species) only has one type of creature – in this case the Lion. The scientific (latin) name for any species is its genus name followed by its species name. In this way the Lion is Panthera leo and the Leopard (which is closely related, so it is in the same genus) is Panthera pardus . Notice by convention the name is either written in italics or underlined and the genus name is given a capital letter while the species is small case.
Which are found in Lebanon?
| Found in Lebanon (or in the Mediterranean sea) now | Was found in Lebanon but now extinct | Never found in Lebanon |
| Coral – soft corals are found on the coast | Bear | Crocodile |
| Crab – lots; salt and fresh water | Leopard | Elephant |
| Octopus – common off the coast | Lion | Giraffe |
| Frog – common (4 species of frogs and toads) | Cheetah | |
| Hawk – several species particularly on migration | ||
| Shark – several species off the coast | ||
| Sperm Whale – rare but is found in the Med. sea | ||
| Wild Boar – quite common | ||
| Badger – present | ||
| Wolf – very rare |