INVERTEBRATE

Invertebrate

Invertebrates are animal species that do not possess or develop a vertebral column, derived from the notochord. This in effect includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include insects, worms, clams, crabs, octopus, snails, and starfish. Taxonomically speaking, "invertebrate" is no more than a term of convenience. The overwhelming majority of animal species are invertebrates, because only about 4% of animal species include a vertebral column in their anatomy. In other words all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata are regarded as invertebrates. Furthermore, many individual ...

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invertebrate

Noun

  1. An animal without vertebrae, i.e. backbone.

Adjective

  1. Lacking a backbone.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: invertebrate
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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