Word Finder - animals

definition

In scientific usage, a multicellular organism that is usually mobile, whose cells are not encased in a rigid cell wall (distinguishing it from plants and fungi) and which derives energy solely from the consumption of other organisms (distinguishing it from plants).

example

A cat is an animal, not a plant. Humans are also animals, under the scientific definition, as we are not plants.

synonyms

• beast
• creature

definition

In non-scientific usage, any member of the kingdom Animalia other than a human.

synonyms

• beast

definition

In non-scientific usage, any land-living vertebrate (i.e. not fishes, insects, etc.).

definition

A person who behaves wildly; a bestial, brutal, brutish, cruel, or inhuman person.

example

My students are animals.

synonyms

• brute
• monster
• savage

definition

A person of a particular type.

example

He's a political animal.

definition

Matter, thing.

example

a whole different animal

Animals seem to sense your mood.

He loved animals, but he spent his entire life scraping to make ends meet.

She would be taking care of the animals and house.

Do you have any animals yet?

Those animals were more afraid of her than she of them, and he knew it.

One must pity the animals too.

Eventually they would run the Longhorns with the buffalo, and then Brutus could stay with all of them, but the animals would have to be quarantined at first and then allowed to adjust to each other.

The rest of the meal was taken up with light conversation about the weather, the clinic, the animals... anything but their feelings about marriage.

There are bears and other animals in the woods, you know.

When you're riding an ATV you can cover more territory, and the animals have grown used to the sound of them.

They have some very nice animals.

So I say the horses and chickens are mine and Alex says the other animals are his.

It's early morning now and the noise of the loading of the pack animals down at Ashenfelter's stables has woken me.

Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew forty miles?

Besides, those are my animals.

Even Mrs. Reynolds pitched in with some stuffed animals - a giraffe and horse.

We could take two wagons, but that would mean we'd have to travel slow, and there wouldn't be any animals for riding except Bordeaux's horse.

Of course, it would be more profitable for the ranch if I culled those animals by taking them to the slaughter house.

You run around turning into animals and tearing off people's heads and then just…a bed and breakfast?

After the animals were fed, she went back to the house and started cleaning.

In this connexion it is of interest to note that, both in the Mediterranean islands and in West Africa, dwarf elephants of the African type are accompanied by pigmy species of hippopotamus, although we have not yet evidence to show that in Africa the two animals occupy actually the same area.

The district includes several caves, such as Victoria Cave, close to the town, where bones of animals, and stone, bone and other implements and ornaments have been discovered.

Although several species belonging to the second class occasionally enter the bodies of water snails and other animals before reaching their definitive host, they undergo no alteration of form in this intermediate host; the case is different, however, in Filaria medinensis and other forms, in which a free larval is followed by a parasitic existence in two distinct hosts, all the changes being accompanied by a metamorphosis.

Helvetius, in his work on man, referred all differences between our species and the lower animals to certain peculiarities of organization, and so prepared the way for a conception of human development out of lower forms as a process of physical evolution.

The judges, in making their awards at the show held annually in December, at Islington, North London (since 1862), are instructed to decide according to quality of flesh, lightness of offal, age and early maturity, with no restrictions as to feeding, and thus to promote the primary aim of the club in encouraging the selection and breeding of the best and most useful animals for the production of meat, and testing their capabilities in respect of early maturity.

At the centenary show in 1898 provision was made for 40 classes for cattle, 29 for sheep, 18 for pigs, and 7 for animals to be slaughtered, whilst to mark the importance of the occasion the prizes offered amounted to close upon 5000 in value.

This table is taken from Warington's Chemistry of the Farm, 19th edition (Vinton and Co.), to which reference may be made for a detailed discussion of the feeding of animals.

The competition thus constitutes what is termed a " block test," and it is instructive in affording the opportunity of seeing the quality of the carcases furnished by the several animals, and in particular the relative proportion and distribution of fat and lean meat.

The principle of this act in regard to foreign animals was that of free importation, with power for the Privy Council to prohibit or subject to quarantine and slaughter, as circumstances seemed to require.

The act of 1869 was at that time the most complete measure that had ever been passed for dealing with diseases of animals.

The ports in Great Britain at which foreign animals may be landed are Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London; t 'Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Animals from the Channel Islands may be landed at Southampton.

It is compulsory on owners to notify the authorities as to the existence of scab amongst their sheep. By the Diseases of Animals Act (1903) powers to prescribe the dipping of sheep, irrespective of the presence or otherwise of sheep scab, were conferred upon the Board of Agriculture.

In addition there have been some cases of rabies in animals other than dogs.

On the 1st of September 1890 the Board of Agriculture assumed powers with respect to pleuro-pneumonia under the Diseases of Animals Act of that year.

The compulsory slaughter at the place of landing does not extend to animals shipped from Ireland into Great Britain, and this is a matter of the highest importance to Irish stock-breeders, who find their best market close at hand on the east of St George's Channel.

The returns from Ireland under the Diseases of Animals Acts 1894 and 1896 are less significant than those of Great Britain.

The science of insects began with Aristotle, who included in a class "Entoma" the true insects, the arachnids and the myriapods, the Crustacea forming another class ("Malacostraca") of the "Anaema" or "bloodless animals."

From these structural and palaeontological evidences, geologists suppose that the formation of the cave was carried on simultaneously with the excavation of the valley; that the small streams, flowing down the upper ramifications of the valley, entered the western opening of the cave, and traversing the fissures in the limestone, escaped by the lower openings in the chief valley; and that the rounded pebbles found in the shingle bed were carried in by these streams. It would be only at times of drought that the cave was frequented by animals, a theory which explains the small quantity of animal remains in the shingle.

Somaliland is rich in the larger wild animals.

Animals cannot make use of these decomposition products, but the plants can.

The first edition also gives an engraving of the ark (repeated in the editions up to the fifth), in shape like a long roofed box, floating on the waters; the animals are seen in separate stalls.

Cuvier may be regarded as the zoologist by whom anatomy was made the one important guide to the understanding of the relations of animals.

The more cautious Cuvier adopted a view of the relationships of animals which, whilst denying genetic connexion as the explanation, recognized an essential identity of structure throughout whole groups of animals.

Owen not only occupied himself with the dissection of rare animals, such as the Pearly Nautilus, Lingula, Limulus, Protopterus, Apteryx, &c., and with the description and reconstruction of extinct reptiles, birds and mammals - following the Cuvierian tradition - but gave precision and currency to the morphological doctrines which had taken their rise in the beginning of the century by the introduction of two terms, " homology " and " analogy," which were defined so as to express two different kinds of agreement in animal structures, which, owing to the want of such " counters of thought," had been hitherto continually confused.

Analogous structures in any two animals compared were by Owen defined as structures performing similar functions, but not necessarily derived from the modification of one and the same part in the " plan " or " archetype " according to which the two animals compared were supposed to be constructed.

It is impossible to enumerate or to give due consideration to all the names in the army of anatomical and embryological students of the middle third of the 19th century whose labours bore fruit in the modification of zoological theories and in the building up of a true classification of animals.

They were attempts to arrive at a true knowledge of the relationships of animals by " royal roads "; their followers were landed in barren wastes.

The efforts of the best minds in zoology had been directed for thirty years or more to ascertaining with increased accuracy and minuteness the structure, microscopic and gross, of all possible forms of animals, and not only of the adult structure but of the steps of development of that structure in the growth of each kind of organism from the egg to maturity.

From time to time efforts were made by those who believed that the Creator must have followed a symmetrical system in his production of animals to force one or other artificial, neatly balanced scheme of classification upon the zoological world.