This section is from the book "The Home Cyclopedia Of General Information", by Charles Morris. Also available from Amazon: Home Cyclopedia of Necessary Knowledge.
[L. animal, a living being; anima, breath.] A living being with an organized material body, and endowed with the powers of sensation and voluntary motion. All animals are classed together in one great body called the Animal Kingdom, which is separated into a number of sub-kingdoms or grand divisions, of which the highest is the vertebrata, or animals with an internal skeleton.
 
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