Animals

Introduction

Animals, in their awe-inspiring diversity, are the ever-evolving expressions of life's creativity and adaptability. From the majestic elephants roaming Africa's savannas to the luminous jellyfish drifting in the ocean's abyss, animals bring movement, sound, color, and complexity to our world. But their roles go far beyond the visual and audible tapestries they weave; they are fundamental threads in the intricate web of life, each playing distinct and vital roles in the ecosystems they inhabit.

At the heart of many ecosystems, animals are often the most visible agents of ecological processes. As predators, they regulate populations, ensuring balance and health in the community. As prey, they are essential sustenance for other species, perpetuating the circle of life. Their daily activities, such as digging, grazing and even defecating, shape habitats, influence plant distribution, and enrich the soil.

Migration patterns of certain animals, from butterflies to wildebeests, are monumental events that impact ecosystems in myriad ways, from seed dispersal to nutrient distribution. These journeys are not just remarkable feats of endurance and navigation but are also crucial ecological phenomena that have evolved over millennia.

In symbiotic relationships, animals engage in delicate dances of mutual benefit with other species. Be it the pollination of flowers by hummingbirds or the cleaning of large mammals by industrious birds, these interactions are cornerstones of biodiversity.

However, as vital as they are, many animal species face dire threats—habitat loss, pollution, climate change, and over-exploitation, to name a few. Their decline or extinction can send ripple effects throughout their ecosystems, underscoring the importance of their conservation.

On this page, embark on a journey through the animal kingdom—understanding their myriad roles, the challenges they confront, and the reasons we must ardently champion their survival. Explore how animals, in all their wondrous forms, enrich our world, shape ecosystems, and, in many ways, define the very pulse and rhythm of our planet.

Types of Animal

The following animals are listed (to the best of our ability) from the greatest in biomass to least. This doesn't include humans, livestock, bacteria, viruses, or non-animal organisms such as plants (which massively outweigh animal biomass).

All together animals make up only 0.4% of global biomass, however animals are still serve a critical role in sequestering carbon, and keeping Earth's many functions running smoothly, such as helping plants (our planet's largest branch of life to act as a carbon sink) to reproduce and spread to hard-to-reach places.

Arthropods

These make up 42% of animal biomass.

Arachnids

Crustaceans

Insects

Annelids

Worms

Mollusks

Shellfish

These filter feeders have no brains, and some species remain immobile for most of their lives, but they are never the less vital to our ecosystems. They remove pollutants including bacteria and microplastics from our waters. When they combine to form reefs, they help provide flourishing ecosystems to marine life and protection to coastlines from major storms as well as sea level rise.

In addition to sequestering carbon, they can also help reduce ocean acidification, though they are particularly at risk of being killed by acidification during their younger life stages. For this reasons, activists may want to breed them in tanks, then introduce them after a certain age and size to increase rewilding success rates.

Sponges

Sea sponges including glass sponges are non-mobile animals. They are filter feeders who consumer microscopic organisms including plankton and bacteria, helping to clean our oceans.

Though sponges exist throughout the world's oceans, sponge reefs were thought to have died out in ancient times, until some glass sponge reefs were discovered somewhat recently along the western coast of Canada and the USA. Much of these reefs have already been lost to bottom trawling and other harmful human activities, but much is being done to help preserve the ones we have found.

Amphibians

"In many northern forests and vernal pools, amphibians account for a greater biomass than birds, mammals, and reptiles combined. They are a central part of many food webs being both predators and prey, and being poikilotherms, they turn a greater portion of their calories into biomass compared to homeotherms. Amphibians provide many predators with a stable food and nutrient source. The large number of prey eaten daily by amphibians make them useful regulators of biomass in lower trophic levels, contributing to ecosystem stability, as well as biological control agents against pests such as mosquitos, biting flies, and crop-damaging arthropods. Their thin skin and superficial vasculature make them sensitive to environmental pollutants thereby making them useful indicator species as well." - Importance of Amphibians: A Synthesis of Their Environmental Functions, Benefits to Humans, and Need for Conservation (PDF)

Reptiles

Dangers to Animals

Plastic Pollution

"Consuming plastic leads to widespread scar tissue throughout the internal organs of these seabirds, which slowly starves them, causes kidney and liver disease, and makes them more susceptible to pathogens."

Researchers found that in addition serious damage to their stomach and digestive glands, birds go on to show outward signs including 

"as plastics float around in the ocean for a year, 10 years, a couple of decades, they basically act like a magnet or sponge, and they take all of the chemicals that we've put out into the atmosphere and elsewhere through things like fossil fuel burning, and they absorb it onto the surface so that the plastic becomes" as one marine biologist put it, "like a little toxic bullet.

It's... not just chemicals. Plastics that have been floating in the ocean for years can be vectors for a range of pathogens and diseases. So now we've kind of come full circle.

You've got plastics that can carry bacteria and viruses entering into an animal when it consumes that plastic, and then the plastic itself is breaking down the stomach's ability to defend itself — its mucosal barrier — and it kind of becomes like this loop where things kind of spiral a little bit out of control." - Plastic Pollution is so Bad for Animals it Now Has a Disease Name — 'Plasticosis' 

How to Help Animals

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