Artiodactyla, or cloven-hooved mammals, include such familiar animals as sheep, goats, camels, pigs, cows, deer, giraffes, and antelopes. Most of the world’s species of large land mammals are artiodactyls. Many living artiodactyls evolved features that are adaptive for life on open grasslands.
There once was a gazelle so fleet
Her grace was a sight hard to beat
She’d dart through the grass
So fast it would pass
In a blur of brown hooves and quick feet
Carnivora is a monophyletic order of placental mammals consisting of the most recent common ancestor of all cat-like and dog-like animals, and all descendants of that ancestor. Members of this group are formally referred to as carnivorans, and have evolved to specialize in eating flesh.
Serengeti lions, king of the land
Majestic creatures, strong and grand
With their golden manes and piercing gaze
They rule the savannah unfazed
Roaming the plains, they hunt with skill
Their prey can’t escape, they never will
The lion’s roar echoes through the night
A powerful sound, a fearsome sight
Proboscidea are a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family and several extinct families. First described by J. Illiger in 1811, it encompasses the elephants and their close relatives. From the mid-Miocene onwards, most proboscideans were very large.
There once was an elephant named Pete
Whose trunk was so long and complete
He’d use it to drink
From the river, I think
And to pluck the most succulent sweet.
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They divide into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys, apes and humans).
Odd-toed ungulates are mammals forming the taxonomic order Perissodactyla, are animals—ungulates—who have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three or one of the five original toes. Their non-weight-bearing toes are either present, absent, vestigial, or positioned posteriorly.
There once was a rhino named Rio
Whose horns were as sharp as a knife, oh
He roamed through the land
With his head high and grand
And never did no one give grief, oh
Squamata is the largest order of reptiles, comprising lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians. Which are collectively known as squamates or scaled reptiles. With over 10,900 species, it is also the second-largest order of extant vertebrates, after the perciform fish
