Interesting Facts- The Nine Animal Phylums

So since I saved my biology notes from last year, I'm going to share what the nine phylums of the animal kingdom are. 

First of all, what is a phylum? 

A Phylum is one of the major categories in Taxonomy (the study of living creatures) in which animals are divided. There are seven categories in which to organize the animals:  Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species (from biggest to the most specific). 

 There's actually a funny way I remembered those. So at the beginning of biology last year when we were just learning about these, I had gotten a henna tattoo in the shape of a fish with a cross in the middle at the state fair. And for some reason, I put one of the categories on each point of the tattoo so when I remembered it, I would tap that part in that order. 

I know its really weird, but I'm a very visual person. And sometimes its using weird tricks like that, that will help you remember things more.

The Nine Phylums

Phylum	Characteristics	Examples
Porifera	Contain pores (Porifera); lives in water, most primitive, sessik	Sponge
Cnidaria	Stinging cells; aquatic; tentacles	Jellyfish, hydras, coral
Platyhelminthes	Flat worms	Tape worms; plamranian; flukes
Nematoda	Round worms (remember the Nematodes from Spongebob that ate his house?)	Trichira; hook worms, asckarid
Molluska	Soft bodies; tentacles, shells (most); suction cups	Clam, squid, snail
Annelids	Segmented worms	Earth worms, leech, sand worms
Arthropods	Many jointed appendages; legs; exoskeleton; antenna; feelers; claws	Insects; spiders; lobsters
Echinodermita	Spiney skin; (ocean) water muscular system	Starfish, sand dollar, sea urchins
Chordata	Backbone (notocord) (Cordata, Cor like in cord, or backbone like a cord); skeleton;	Reptiles, Amphidians, mammals, fish, birds, humans

So there's a nice chart that hopefully is easy to understand. In future posts, I'll explore each phylum in more depth (provided I still have my notes for it! Or I can find information on the internet about them) and eventually I'll post about human biology.

Resources
My biology notes

Sincerely,
Sareh