Wikijunior:Life/Today/Linnaean classifications
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In Linnaeus' time, people already talked about species.
A species is sort of plant or animal all of the same type, like 'horses' or like 'goldfish'.
People also already talked about groups of animals that were similar -
like {horses and donkeys and zebras}, or like {carp and goldfish}.
They called a group a genus. Lots of groups aren't called 'genuses', but genera.
They didn't have any system for grouping genera together.
It was rather like having books grouped into {books on trains},
but no group for {Transport} or for {Non-fiction} or for {Children's Books}.
Linnaeus started with species and grouped them into genera.
He then grouped genera into orders. Orders were grouped into classes,
and classes were grouped into kingdoms.