"Geneticists know that strength of a species comes from its
diversity from the fact that the population as a whole can
respond in mnay different ways to many different situations" -
Eric S. Lander, MIT more genes two animals have in common, the
closer they are "related" (not by blood, but by evolution) to
one another. Therefore, different levels of classification exist
to illustrate this relationship. There are seven levels of
classification, the highest group being a kingdom, and the
lowest group a species (the others between the two extremes are,
in order, phylum, class, order, family, and genus). Many
thousands of different organisms may belong to a kingdom, but
only one to a species. For example: humans, dogs, porcupines,
rats, eagles, and salmon all belong to the same kingdom (Kingdom
Anamalia), but only humans belong to the species sapiens and
only dogs to Canis domesticus. Two organism are more closely
"related" as they approach the level of species. This also means
they have more genes in common. Taxo