How do animals move and differ?

This lesson asks you to compare the physical characteristics of various animals and to describe how different animals move. The museum links one old way of sorting animals; your class will bring the animals it studies and the characteristics that change as an animal grows. ¹

Choose two animals. List what is the same about their bodies and what is different, and mark which characteristics stay constant and which change.

Describe how each animal moves its body to get from one place to another. Decide whether it walks, flies, swims or creeps, and what in its body helps it.

In his Book of Animals, al-Jahiz divides animals into those that walk, fly, swim or creep ². He says he follows the names that are established and known among the people of this language ³. He notes that not everything that flies is a bird: locusts, bees and flies fly but are not called birds, and not everything that swims is a fish ^{3 4 5}. He also says that wisdom may show more plainly in the fly, small as it is, than in the splendid horse ^{6 7}.

Al-Jahiz says locusts, bees and flies fly but are not called birds. What would you look at on an animal to decide whether it is a bird, and why?

• Kitab al-Hayawan: the book in seven parts, with chapters on pigeons, ants, snakes and many more animals.
• Al-Jahiz: the author, from Basra.

Read the card on Kitab al-Hayawan. Sort six animals you know into groups by how they move, and say why each belongs in its group.