Principles of Zoology

Zoology is the division of biology that deals with the animal kingdom. It's the scientific study of everything having to do with animals, just as botany is the scientific study of plants. Zoology is a huge field that covers the classification of every animal on earth as well as many broader fields of experimentation and inquiry related to animal life, and the field keeps expanding due to scientific advances that continue to open new areas of research. It is one of the branches of biology, and therefore it is also referred to as animal biology. There are several sub-branches within this field, including ethology, zoography, and anthrozoology. Additionally, zoologists often specialize in the study of specific types of animals. For instance, an ornithologist studies birds, while a mammologist studies mammals. As zoology is a very interdisciplinary subject, there are a number of related fields, including taxonomy, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. One of the most closely related fields to zoology is taxonomy, which is the practice of classifying different types of organisms according to shared characteristics. There are specific organizational structures that animals are put into, usually starting with superfamilies, and ending with subspecies. This field is also related to systematics, in which zoologists classify animals based on their genus or species. Another related field is evolutionary biology. When done in the context of zoology, this field entails studying how animals originally evolved and how they changed over time. This is often closely connected with paleozoology. Ecology and environmental studies are also related subjects, particularly zoography and ethology. This text will give you an overview of zoology.