Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia.

With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have
myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow
sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development.

As of 2022, around 2.16 million living animal species have been described—of which
around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are
vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species
on Earth. Animals' body lengths range from 8.5 μm (0.00033 in) to 33.6 m (110 ft).
They have complex ecologies and interactions with each other and their
environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known
as zoology, and the study of animal behaviors is known as ethology.

Most living animal species belong to the infrakingdom Bilateria, a highly

proliferative clade whose members have a bilaterally symmetric body plan. Extant
bilaterians include the basal group Xenacoelomorpha, but the vast majority belong
to two large superphyla: the protostomes, which include phyla such as arthropods,
molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes, etc.; and the deuterostomes, which
include the three phyla echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter with
the vertebrates being its most successful subphylum. Precambrian life forms
interpreted as early complex animals were already present in the Ediacaran biota of
the late Proterozoic, but fossils of primitive sponge and other speculative early
animals have been dated to as early as the Tonian period. Nearly all modern animal
phyla became clearly established in the fossil record as marine species during the
Cambrian explosion, which began around 539 million years ago (Mya), and most
classes during the Ordovician radiation 485.4 Mya. 6,331 groups of genes common to
all living animals have been identified; these may have arisen from a single common
ancestor that lived 650 Mya during the Cryogenian period.