Explore the animal kingdom, branch by branch.
See how life is organised, from taxonomy and evolution to the body plans that unite and divide every animal on Earth. Built for zoology students who want to see it, not just memorise it.
Pick a path into the kingdom
Each tool takes the same living data and looks at it from a different angle: the tree, the timeline, the traits, the taxonomy, and the words behind it all.
Featured creatures
A few residents from across the kingdom. Click any one to open its field guide entry.
The Animal Kingdom
Browse the whole kingdom as one expandable tree, or step into the vertebrates for a closer comparative look at how one body plan was rebuilt again and again.
Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates
Every vertebrate is a variation on one inherited body plan. These three tools take the same set of animals and look at them from a different angle: the whole skeleton, the single limb, and the soft organ systems inside. Bones and structures are colour coded by what they are, so the same part carries the same colour in every animal.
The story of animal life
Roughly 800 million years in ten steps. Each milestone is a body plan innovation that opened a door for everything that came after. Step through the timeline below.
Compare two animals
Pick any two creatures and see their body plans line up trait by trait. Rows where they differ are highlighted.
The major animal groups at a glance
A master comparison of the nine phyla in this collection. This is the big picture every zoology course circles back to, showing how body plans build up in complexity from sponges to chordates.
Note: molluscan circulation is open except in cephalopods (octopus, squid), which are closed. Arthropod and molluscan coeloms are reduced, and the main body cavity is a blood filled hemocoel.
Taxonomy Explorer
Search an animal to unfold its full classification, then click any rank to read about it and see which animals in the collection belong to it.
Zoology in plain words
Every technical term used on this site, explained simply. If a word in a species entry ever looks unfamiliar, it is defined here.