INTRODUCTION TO LIVING ANIMALS

Zoology is the scientific study of animal and how they live in the various environments. Animals
are diverse due to their structural modifications, evolution, genetic makeup (inheritance and
variation) and adaptation to the environment.

HISTORY OF LIFE

The fundamentals history of life lies in fossil records. The history of life of common descent
occurred with modification which gave a separate identity from the nonliving world. The
common history of life has been traced backward through time from the diverse forms observed
today and in the fossil record to a common ancestor that must have arisen almost 4 billion years
ago. Fossil records and the earth surface have no traceable evidences that explain in detail the
incipient stages of life, those that predate cells. Replication of molecular systems could have
preceded and given rise to cellular life, whose history appears in the fossil record. Yet, this could
not have produced fossils. The most important aspect of life’s history is the concept of
reproduction of individuals with heredity and variation. The multiplication of large molecules
that store information is unique to life and must trace to life’s origin.

General features of Living Systems

The features of every living system include

Chemical uniqueness

Complexity and hierarchical organization

Reproduction (heredity and variation)

Possession of a genetic program;

Metabolism;

Development;

Environmental interaction; and

Movement

1. Chemical uniqueness.
All living systems are unique and have complex molecular organization. Living systems
assemble large molecules, called macromolecules, that greatly exceed in complexity the small
molecules of nonliving matter. The macromolecules of nonliving matter contain the same kinds
of atoms and chemical bonds which obey all fundamental laws of chemistry. It is only the
complex organizational structure of these macromolecules that makes them unique to life. There
are four major categories of biological macromolecules: nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates,
and lipids. These categories differ in the structures of their component parts, the kinds of
chemical bonds that link their subunits together, and their roles in living systems. The general
structures of these macromolecules evolved and stabilized early in the history of life. They occur
in every form of life today with some modifications. For instance, proteins are built from 20
specific kinds of amino acid subunits linked together by peptide bonds in a linear sequence.
Additional bonds occurring between amino acids that are not adjacent to each other in the protein
chain give the protein a complex, three-dimensional structure. A typical protein contains several
hundred amino acid subunits. Despite the stability of this basic protein structure, the ordering of
the different amino acids in a protein molecule shows enormous variation. This variation
underlies much of the diversity that we observe among different kinds of living organisms. The
nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids likewise contain characteristic bonds that link variable
subunits. This organization gives living systems a common biochemical theme with great
potential diversity.

2. Complexity and hierarchical organization.

This is demonstrated in all living systems. Nonliving matter is organized at least into atoms and
molecules and often has a higher degree of organization as well. However, atoms and molecules
are combined into patterns in the living world that do not exist in nonliving matter. There is a
hierarchy of levels in living systems, and they occur in ascending order of complexity,
macromolecules, cells, organisms, populations, and species. Each level builds on the level below
it and has its own internal structure, which is also often hierarchical. Within a cell, for example,
macromolecules are assembled into structures such as ribosomes, chromosomes, and
membranes, and these are likewise combined in various ways to form even more complex
subcellular structures called organelles, such as mitochondria. The organismal level also has a
hierarchical substructure; cells combine to form tissues, which combine to form organs, which
likewise combine to form organ systems. Cells are the smallest units of the biological hierarchy
that are semiautonomous in their ability to conduct basic functions, including reproduction.
Replication of molecules and subcellular components occurs only within a cellular context, not
independently. Cells are therefore considered the basic units of living systems.

We can isolate cells from an organism and cause them to grow and to multiply under laboratory
conditions in the presence of nutrients alone. This semiautonomous replication cannot occur for
any individual molecules or subcellular components, which require additional cellular
constituents for their reproduction. Each successively higher level of the biological hierarchy is
composed of units of the preceding lower level in the hierarchy. An important consequence of
this hierarchy is that we cannot infer the properties at any given level even from the most
complete knowledge of the properties of its component parts. A physiological feature, such as
blood pressure, is a property of the organismal level; it is impossible to predict someone’s blood
pressure simply by knowing the physical characteristics of individual cells of the body.
Likewise, systems of social interaction, as seen in bees, appear at the populational level; one
cannot infer properties of this social system by studying individual bees in isolation. Appearance
of new characteristics at a given level of organization is called emergence, and these
characteristics are called emergent properties. These properties arise from interactions among the
component parts of a system.

3. Reproduction

All living thing can reproduce themselves. Life does not arise spontaneously but comes only
from prior life, through reproduction. Although life certainly originated from nonliving matter at
least once, this origin featured enormously long periods of time and conditions very different
from the current biosphere. At each level of the biological hierarchy, living forms reproduce to
generate others like themselves. Genes replicate to produce new genes. Cells divide to produce
new cells. Organisms reproduce, sexually or asexually, to produce new organisms. Populations
reproduce themselves through time to form lineages of ancestral descendant populations.
Evolutionary divergence of character among separated population lineages can produce a
multiplication of species, in a process called speciation. Reproduction at any hierarchical level
usually features an increase in numbers. Individual genes, cells, organisms, populations, or
species may fail to reproduce themselves, but reproduction is nonetheless an expected property
of these individuals.

Reproduction at each of these levels shows the complementary, and yet apparently contradictory,
phenomena of heredity and variation. Heredity is the faithful transmission of traits from parents
to offspring, usually (but not necessarily) observed at the organismal level. Variation is the
production of differences among the traits of different individuals. In a reproductive process,
properties of descendants resemble those of their parents to varying degrees but usually are not
identical to them. Replication of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) occurs with high fidelity, but
errors occur at repeatable rates. Cell division is exceptionally precise, especially with regard to
nuclear material, but chromosomal changes occur nonetheless at measurable rates. Organismal
reproduction likewise demonstrates both heredity and variation, the latter most obvious in
sexually reproducing forms. Production of new populations and species also demonstrates
conservation of some properties and changes of others. Two closely related frog species may
have similar mating calls but differ in the rhythms of repeated sounds. Interaction of heredity and
variation in the reproductive process makes organic evolution possible and inevitable. If heredity
were perfect, living systems would never change; if variation were uncontrolled by heredity,
biological systems would lack the stability that allows them to persist through time.

4. Possession of a genetic program.

Genetic program provides fidelity of inheritance. Nucleic acids encode structures of the protein
molecules needed for organismal development and functioning. For animals and most other
organisms, DNA stores genetic information. DNA is a very long, linear chain of subunits called
nucleotides, each of which contains a sugar phosphate (deoxyribose phosphate) and one of
four nitrogenous bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine, or thymine, abbreviated A, C, G, and T,
respectively). The sequence of nucleotide bases contains a code for the order of amino acids in
the protein specified by the DNA molecule. The correspondence between the sequence of bases
in DNA and the sequence of amino acids in a protein is the genetic code. The genetic code arose
early in the evolutionary history of life, and the same code occurs in bacteria and in the nuclear
genomes of almost all animals and plants. The near constancy of this code among living forms
provides strong evidence for a single origin of life. The genetic code has undergone very little
evolutionary change since its origin because an alteration would disrupt the structure of nearly
every protein, which would in turn severely disrupt cellular functions that require very specific
protein structures. Only in the rare instance that the altered protein structures maintained their
cellular functions would such a change possibly survive and be reproduced. Evolutionary change
in the genetic code has occurred in the DNA contained in animal mitochondria, the organelles
that regulate cellular energy. The genetic code in animal mitochondrial DNA therefore is slightly
different from the standard code of nuclear and bacterial DNA. Because mitochondrial DNA
specifies far fewer proteins than does nuclear DNA, the likelihood of getting a change in the
code that maintains cellular functions is greater there than in the nucleus.

5. Metabolism.

All living organisms acquire nutrients from their environments to maintain fit and live in their
environment. Nutrients supply the chemical energy and molecular components for building and
maintaining a living system. This chemical processes involved is called metabolism. They
include digestion, acquisition of energy (respiration), and synthesis of molecules and
structures. Metabolism is an interaction of destructive (catabolic) and constructive (anabolic)
reactions. The most fundamental anabolic and catabolic chemical processes used by living
systems arose early in the evolutionary history of life, and all living forms share them. These
reactions include synthesis of carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins and their
constituent parts and cleavage of chemical bonds to recover energy stored in them. In animals,
many fundamental metabolic reactions occur at the cellular level, often in specific organelles
present throughout the animal kingdom. Cellular respiration occurs, for example, in
mitochondria. Cellular and nuclear membranes regulate metabolism by controlling the
movement of molecules across the cellular and nuclear boundaries, respectively. The study of
metabolic functions from the biochemical to the organismal levels is called physiology.

6. Development.

Most animals pass through a characteristic life cycle. Development describes the characteristic
changes that an organism undergoes from its origin (usually the fertilization of an egg by sperm)
to its final adult form. Development usually features changes in size and shape, and
differentiation of structures within an organism. Even the simplest one-celled organisms grow in
size and replicate their component parts until they divide into two or more cells. Multicellular
organisms undergo more dramatic changes during their lives. Different developmental stages of
some multicellular forms are so dissimilar that they are hardly recognizable as belonging to the
same species. Embryos are distinctly different from juvenile and adult forms into which they
develop. Even postembryonic development of some organisms includes stages dramatically
different from each other. The transformation that occurs from one stage to another is called
metamorphosis. There is little resemblance, for example, among the egg, larval, pupal, and
adult stages of metamorphic insects. Early stages of development are often more similar among
organisms of different species than are later developmental stages.

7. Environmental interaction.

Ecology is the term that best describe the study of organismal interaction with an environment.
The interaction with the environment is seen in all animals. The factors that influence
geographical spread and abundance of animals is key to ecological studies. Details in ecological
studies reveals how an organism detects environmental stimuli and responds appropriately by
metabolic and physiological adjustments. All organisms respond to environmental stimuli, a
property called irritability. The response to stimulus may be simple, such as a unicellular
organism moving from or toward a light source or away from a noxious substance, or it may be
quite complex, such as a bird responding to a complicated series of signals in a mating ritual.
The living part of the sphere is the biosphere, life in this environment cannot be separated.

8. Movement

All living organism must either passively or actively move. The energy that living systems
extract from their environments permits them to initiate controlled movements. Such movements
at the cellular level are essential for reproduction, growth, and many responses to stimuli in all
living forms and for development in multicellular ones. Semiautonomous movement occurs even
in some biological macromolecules. An enzymatic protein undergoes characteristic and
reversible changes in shape as it binds a substrate, catalyzes a reaction, and releases a product.
These characteristic molecular movements occur even when the enzyme is removed from its
cellular context and used as a reagent to catalyze reactions in a laboratory. Autonomous
movement reaches great diversity in animals, Movement occur when a single species or entire
populations disperse from one geographic location to another one over time. Movement
characteristic of nonliving matter, such as that of particles in solution, radioactive decay of
nuclei, and eruption of volcanoes is not precisely controlled by the moving objects themselves
and often involves entirely external forces.