clasifications

If you go to a shop to look for a new pair of jeans, what do you look for? Do you want skinny jeans or classic straight leg style? Maybe the colour of the jeans is more important to you. Of course, the jeans must fit you. A jeans department within a store will be organised in style, colour and size to make it easier for customers to find the right pair of jeans. 

Organising things is called classification. You can classify all kinds of things: books in a library, cars in a car park or animals in an ecosystem. When you classify things, you organise them by dividing them into groups, like the jeans in the example. When scientists organise living things, they divide them into groups called taxonomic groups. You already know one of the groups: the species. Classification is a way to make sense of all the different kinds of organisms.For years scientists have been discussing classification of life forms. Scientists group life forms, based on what the organism looks like, how they live and, more recently, on their genes. Many organisms are still unknown yet, scientists are working hard to identify and describe them. Often this leads to discussions about the groups they have made. New information about genes can cause scientists to reconsider things and change the taxonomix groups again. Sometimes different scientists do not agree with eachother. Therefore, different classification systems are used all over the world.

It would be very difficult for scientists (and us) to share information if we did not agree about certain groups. For example, imagine someone told you they have found a Chachalaca. You would probably say, ‘huh?’. But if they tell you a chachalaca is a type of bird, you know something about it right away!