Taxonomy, the Classification of Living Things...and Shoes!

Always thinking like scientists, the Navigators began our study of animals by learning how to classify living things. We did this by sorting our shoes. We started out by splitting them into two of the most obvious groups--the laces and the non-laces. We then continued to observe and divide until each shoe had a specific name--the genus species of the shoe. 

We see:

We observed many things such as how shoes stay on our feet, the colors, the materials, the brand names, the decorations, the soles, even the cleanliness (we decided to not sort by that one since that one changes and is not part of the actual shoes) 

Very serious business

So many types

So many details

We wonder:

Since we figured out a way to classify shoes, we wondered how scientists divide animals into different groups. 

We were given groups of animals and began to sort by animal attributes. 

One group sorted by types of appendages.

Another sorted by number of appendages.

This group measured the animals.

Writing the branches of long nose and short nose

Each group came up with a genus species for each animal.

Each group came up with a different way of sorting.

We talked about the good parts and the not-so-good parts of how each group sorted. 

We continue to wonder:

Why did we have differences in how we classified our animals?

How do scientists classify animals?

Why would it be important to have a standard way to classify animals?

We discover:

We discovered that in the 1700's, (around the time of some our explorers they noticed!), a man named Karl Linnaeus came up a system of classification that is still used today by scientists around the world. 

We discovered that the official, world-wide language of science is Latin. 

We have much more to discover about animalia but now that we homo sapiens can now speak some Latin, we're ready to go for it!