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Animal Farm is a satirical allegorical novella, in the form of a beast fable,^[1] by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945.^[2][3] It tells the story of a group of anthropomorphic farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state far worse than before.

According to Orwell, Animal Farm reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, a period when Russia lived under the Marxist–Leninist ideology of Joseph Stalin.^[1][4] Orwell, a democratic socialist,^[5] was a critic of Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Barcelona May Days conflicts between the POUM and Stalinist forces, during the Spanish Civil War.^[6][a] In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin (“un conte satirique contre Staline“),^[7] and in his essay, “Why I Write” (1946), wrote: “Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”.^[8]

The original title of the novel was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. American publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, and only one of the translations, during Orwell’s lifetime, the Telugu version, kept it. Other title variations include subtitles like “A Satire” and “A Contemporary Satire”.^[7] Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for “bear”, a symbol of Russia. It also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques.^[7]

Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the United Kingdom was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany and the British intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated.^[9] The manuscript was initially rejected by several British and American publishers,^[10] including one of Orwell’s own, Victor Gollancz, which delayed its publication.^[b] It became a great commercial success when it did appear, as international relations and public opinion were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War.^[12]

Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005);^[13] it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels,^[14] and number 46 on the BBC‘s The Big Read poll.^[15] It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996,^[16] and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.^[17]

Plot summary

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The animal populace of the poorly run Manor Farm near Willingdon, England, is ripened for rebellion by neglect at the hands of the irresponsible and alcoholic farmer, Mr. Jones. One night, the exalted boar, Old Major, holds a conference, at which he calls for the overthrow of humans and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called “Beasts of England“. When Old Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and stage a revolt, driving Mr. Jones off the farm and renaming the property “Animal Farm”. They adopt the Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, “All animals are equal”. The decree is painted in large letters on one side of the barn. Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism. To commemorate the start of Animal Farm, Snowball raises a green flag with a white hoof and horn. Food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their health. Following an unsuccessful attempt by Mr. Jones and his associates to retake the farm (later dubbed the “Battle of the Cowshed”), Snowball announces his plans to modernise the farm by building a windmill. Napoleon disputes this idea, and matters come to a head, which culminates in Napoleon’s dogs chasing Snowball away and Napoleon effectively declaring himself supreme commander.

Napoleon enacts changes to the governance structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs who will run the farm. Through a young porker named Squealer, Napoleon claims credit for the idea of building the windmill, claiming that Snowball was only trying to win animals to his side. The animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. When the animals find the windmill collapsed after a violent storm, Napoleon and Squealer persuade the animals that Snowball is trying to sabotage their project, and begin to purge the farm of animals accused by Napoleon of consorting with his old rival. When some animals recall the Battle of the Cowshed, Napoleon (who was nowhere to be found during the battle) gradually smears Snowball to the point of saying he is a collaborator of Mr. Jones, even dismissing the fact that Snowball was given an award of courage, while falsely representing himself as the main hero of the battle. “Beasts of England” is replaced with “Animal Farm”, while an anthem glorifying Napoleon, who is presumably adopting the lifestyle of a man (“Comrade Napoleon”), is composed and sung. Napoleon then conducts a second purge, during which many animals who are alleged to be helping Snowball in plots are executed by Napoleon’s dogs, which troubles the rest of the animals. Despite their hardships, the animals are easily pacified by Napoleon’s retort that they are better off than they were under Mr. Jones, as well as by the sheep’s continual bleating of “four legs good, two legs bad”.

Mr. Frederick, a neighbouring farmer, attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the restored windmill. Although the animals win the battle, they do so at great cost, as many, including Boxer the workhorse, are wounded. Although he recovers from this, Boxer eventually collapses while working on the windmill (being almost 12 years old at that point). He is taken away in a knacker‘s van and a donkey called Benjamin alerts the animals of this, but Squealer quickly waves off their alarm by persuading the animals that the van had been purchased from the knacker by an animal hospital and that the previous owner’s signboard had not been repainted. Squealer subsequently reports Boxer’s death and honours him with a festival the following day. In truth, Napoleon had engineered the sale of Boxer to the knacker, allowing him and his inner circle to acquire money to buy whisky for themselves.

Years pass, the windmill is rebuilt and another windmill is constructed, which makes the farm a good amount of income. However, the ideals that Snowball discussed, including stalls with electric lighting, heating, and running water, are forgotten, with Napoleon advocating that the happiest animals live simple lives. Snowball has been forgotten, alongside Boxer, with “the exception of the few who knew him”. Many of the animals who participated in the rebellion are dead or old. Mr. Jones is also now known to be dead, having “died in an inebriates’ home in another part of the country”. The pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, drink alcohol, and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments are abridged to just one phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. The maxim “Four legs good, two legs bad” is similarly changed to “Four legs good, two legs better”. Other changes include the Hoof and Horn flag being replaced with a plain green banner and Old Major’s skull, which was previously put on display, being reburied.

Napoleon holds a dinner party for the pigs and local farmers, with whom he celebrates a new alliance. The other farm animals, who have not been invited, gather toward the window to watch. He abolishes the practice of the revolutionary traditions and restores the name “The Manor Farm”. The men and pigs start playing cards, flattering and praising each other while cheating at the game. Both Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington, one of the farmers, play the ace of spades at the same time and both sides begin fighting loudly over who cheated first. When the animals outside look at the pigs and men, they can no longer distinguish between the two.

Characters

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Pigs

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• Old Major – An aged prize Middle White boar provides the inspiration that fuels the rebellion. He is also called Willingdon Beauty when showing. He is an allegorical combination of Karl Marx, one of the creators of communism, and Vladimir Lenin, the communist leader of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet nation, in that he draws up the principles of the revolution. His skull being put on revered public display recalls Lenin, whose embalmed body was left in indefinite repose.^[18] By the end of the book, the skull is reburied.
• Napoleon – “A large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way”.^[19] An allegory of Joseph Stalin,^[18] Napoleon is the leader of Animal Farm.
• Snowball – Napoleon’s rival and original head of the farm after Jones’s overthrow. His life parallels that of Leon Trotsky,^[18] although there is no reference to Snowball having been murdered (as Trotsky was); he may also combine some elements from Lenin.^[20][c]
• Squealer – A small, white, fat large white who serves as Napoleon’s second-in-command and minister of propaganda, is a collective portrait of the Soviet nomenklatura and journalists, such as of the national daily Pravda (The Truth), able to justify every twist and turn in Stalin’s policy.^[18]
• Minimus – A poetic pig who writes the second national anthem of Animal Farm after the singing of “Beasts of England” is banned; later he composes a poem “Comrade Napoleon”. Literary theorist John Rodden compares him to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky,^[21] who eulogized Lenin and the Soviet Union, although Mayakovsky neither wrote anthems nor praised Stalin in his poems.
• The piglets – Hinted to be the children of Napoleon and are the first generation of animals subjugated to his idea of animal inequality.
• The young pigs – Four pigs who complain about Napoleon’s takeover of the farm but are quickly silenced and later executed, the first animals killed in Napoleon’s farm purge. Probably based on the Great Purge of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Alexei Rykov.
• Pinkeye – A minor pig who is mentioned only once; he is the taste-tester that samples Napoleon’s food to make sure it is not poisoned, in response to rumours about an assassination attempt on Napoleon.

Humans

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• Mr. Jones – A heavy drinker who is the original owner of Manor Farm, a farm in disrepair with farmhands who often loaf on the job. He is an allegory of Russian Tsar Nicholas II,^[22] who was forced to abdicate following the February Revolution of 1917 and was executed, along with the rest of his family, by the Bolsheviks on 17 July 1918. The animals revolt after Jones goes on a drinking binge, returns hungover the following day and neglects them completely. Jones is married, but his wife plays no active role in the book. She seems to live with her husband’s drunkenness, going to bed while he stays up drinking until late into the night. In her only other appearance, she hastily throws a few things into a travel bag and flees when she sees that the animals are revolting. Towards the end of the book, Napoleon’s “favourite sow” wears her old Sunday dress.
• Mr. Frederick – The tough owner of Pinchfield Farm, a small but well-kept neighbouring farm, who briefly allies with Napoleon.^{[23][24][25][26]} Animal Farm shares land boundaries with Pinchfield on one side and Foxwood on another, making Animal Farm a “buffer zone” between the two bickering farmers. The animals of Animal Farm are terrified of Frederick, as rumours abound of him abusing his animals and entertaining himself with cockfighting. Napoleon allies with Frederick to sell surplus timber that Pilkington also sought, but is enraged to learn Frederick paid him in counterfeit money. Shortly after the swindling, Frederick and his men invade Animal Farm, killing many animals and destroying the windmill. The brief alliance and subsequent invasion may allude to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Operation Barbarossa.^[25][27][28]
• Mr. Pilkington – The easy-going but crafty and well-to-do owner of Foxwood Farm, a large neighbouring farm overgrown with weeds. Pilkington is wealthier than Frederick and owns more land, but his farm needs care as opposed to Frederick’s smaller but more efficiently run farm. Although on bad terms with Frederick, Pilkington is also concerned about the animal revolution that deposed Jones and is worried that this could also happen to him.
• Mr. Whymper – A man hired by Napoleon to act as the liaison between Animal Farm and human society. At first, he acquires necessities that cannot be produced on the farm, such as dog biscuits and paraffin wax, but later he procures luxuries like alcohol for the pigs.

Equines

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• Boxer – A loyal, kind, dedicated, extremely strong, hard-working, and respectable cart-shire horse, although quite naive and gullible.^[29] Boxer does a large share of the physical labour on the farm. He is shown to hold the belief that “Napoleon is always right.” At one point, he questions Squealer’s statement that Snowball was always against the welfare of the farm, causing him to be attacked by Napoleon’s dogs, however Boxer’s immense strength repels the attack, worrying the pigs that their authority can be challenged. Boxer has been compared to Alexey Stakhanov, a diligent and enthusiastic role model of the Stakhanovite movement.^[30] He has been described as “faithful and strong”;^[31] he believes any problem can be solved if he works harder.^[32] When Boxer is injured, Napoleon sells him to a local knacker to buy himself whisky, and Squealer gives a moving account, falsifying the circumstances of Boxer’s death.
• Mollie – A self-centred, self-indulgent, and vain young white mare who quickly leaves for another farm after the revolution, like those who left Russia after the fall of the Tsar.^[33] She is only once mentioned again, and has an affinity for hair ribbons and sugar cubes.
• Clover – A gentle, caring mare, who shows concern, especially for Boxer, who often pushes himself too hard. Clover can read all the letters of the alphabet, but cannot “put words together”.
• Benjamin – A donkey, one of the oldest, wisest animals on the farm, and one of the few who can read properly. He is sceptical, temperamental and cynical: his most frequent remark is, “Life will go on as it has always gone on – that is, badly”. Academic Morris Dickstein has suggested there is “a touch of Orwell himself in this creature’s timeless scepticism”^[34] and indeed, friends called Orwell “Donkey George”, “after his grumbling donkey Benjamin, in Animal Farm“.^[35] Benjamin manages to evade the purges and survive despite the threat he potentially poses given his knowledge, his age, and his equivocal, albeit apolitical, positions.

Other animals

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• Muriel – A goat who is another of the oldest, wisest animals on the farm and friends with all of the animals on the farm. Similar to Benjamin, Muriel is one of the few animals on the farm who is not a pig but can read. She survives, as does Benjamin, by eschewing politics.
• The puppies – Offspring of Jessie and Bluebell, the puppies were taken away at birth by Napoleon and raised by him to serve as his powerful security force.
• Moses – The Raven, “Mr. Jones’s especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker”.^[36] Initially following Mrs. Jones into exile, he reappears several years later and resumes his role of talking but not working. He regales Animal Farm’s denizens with tales of a wondrous place beyond the clouds called “Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest forever from our labours!” Orwell portrays established religion as “the black raven of priestcraft – promising pie in the sky when you die, and faithfully serving whoever happens to be in power”. His preaching to the animals heartens them, and Napoleon allows Moses to reside at the farm “with an allowance of a gill of beer daily”, akin to how Stalin brought back the Russian Orthodox Church during the Second World War.^[34]
• The sheep – They are not given individual names or personalities. They show limited understanding of Animalism and the political atmosphere of the farm, yet nonetheless, they are the voice of blind conformity^[34] as they bleat their support of Napoleon’s ideals with jingles during his speeches and meetings with Snowball. Their constant bleating of “four legs good, two legs bad” was used as a device to drown out any opposition or alternative views from Snowball, much as Stalin used hysterical crowds to drown out Trotsky.^[37] Towards the end of the book, Squealer (the propagandist) trains the sheep to alter their slogan to “four legs good, two legs better”, which they dutifully do.
• The hens – The hens are promised following the rebellion that they will get to keep their eggs, which are stolen from them under Mr. Jones, however, their eggs are soon taken from them under the premise of buying goods from outside the farm. The hens are among the first to rebel, albeit unsuccessfully, against Napoleon, being brutally suppressed through starvation. They represent the Ukrainian victims of the Holodomor.^[38][39]
• The cows – Unnamed. The cows are enticed into the revolution by promises that their milk will not be stolen but can be used to raise their calves. Their milk is then stolen by the pigs, who learn to milk them. The milk is stirred into the pigs’ mash every day, while the other animals are denied such luxuries.
• The cat – Unnamed and never seen to carry out any work. The cat is absent for long periods and is forgiven because her excuses are so convincing and she “purred so affectionately that it was impossible not to believe in her good intentions”.^[40] She has no interest in the politics of the farm, and the only time she is recorded as having participated in an election, she is found to have actually “voted on both sides”.^[41]
• The ducks – Unnamed.
• The roosters – One arranges to wake Boxer early, and a black one acts as a trumpeter for Napoleon since he was a young cockerel.
• The geese – Unnamed. One gander commits suicide by eating nightshade berries.
• The rats – Unnamed. Classed among the wild animals, unsuccessful attempts were made to civilise them and teach them the principles of Animalism.

Genre and style

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George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an example of a political satire and an allegory that was intended to have a “wider application”, according to Orwell himself, in terms of its relevance.^[42] Stylistically, the work shares many similarities with some of Orwell’s other works, most notably Nineteen Eighty-Four, as both have been considered works of Swiftian satire.^[43] Furthermore, these two prominent works seem to suggest Orwell’s bleak view of the future for humanity; he seems to stress the potential/current threat of dystopias similar to those in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.^[44] In these kinds of works, Orwell distinctly references the disarray and traumatic conditions of Europe following the Second World War.^[45] Orwell’s style and writing philosophy as a whole were very concerned with the pursuit of truth in writing.^[46]

Orwell was committed to communicating straightforwardly, given the way that he felt words were commonly used in politics to deceive and confuse. For this reason, he is careful, in Animal Farm, to make sure the narrator speaks in an unbiased and uncomplicated fashion.^[46] The difference is seen in the way that the animals speak and interact, as the general moral animals seem to speak their minds clearly, while the wicked animals on the farm, such as Napoleon, twist language in such a way that it meets their insidious desires. This style reflects Orwell’s proximity to the issues facing Europe at the time and his determination to comment critically on Stalin’s Soviet Russia.^[46]

Background

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Origin and writing

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Just as Nineteen Eighty-Four would be inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin‘s We, Animal Farm also had its influences: “In 1937, the year in which Orwell said he first thought of Animal Farm, Gollancz’s Left Book Club published both The Road to Wigan Pier and a left-wing children’s book, The Adventures of the Little Pig and Other Stories by F. Le Gros and Ida Clark.”^[47]

George Orwell wrote the manuscript between November 1943 and February 1944^[48] after his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which he described in Homage to Catalonia (1938). In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him “how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries”.^[49] This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals.^[50] Homage to Catalonia sold poorly; after seeing Arthur Koestler‘s best-selling Darkness at Noon about the Moscow Trials, Orwell decided that fiction would be the best way to describe totalitarianism.^[51]

Immediately before writing the book, Orwell quit the BBC. He was also upset about a booklet for propagandists the Ministry of Information had put out. The booklet included instructions on how to quell ideological fears of the Soviet Union, such as directions to claim that the Red Terror was a figment of Nazi imagination.^[52]

In the preface, Orwell described the source of the idea of setting the book on a farm:^[50]

I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

In 1944, the manuscript was almost lost when a German V-1 flying bomb destroyed his London home. Orwell spent hours sifting through the rubble to find the pages intact.^[53]

Publication

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Publishing

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Orwell initially encountered difficulty getting the manuscript published, largely due to fears that the book might upset the alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Four publishers refused to publish Animal Farm, yet one had initially accepted the work but declined it after consulting the Ministry of Information.^[54][d] Eventually, Secker and Warburg published the first edition in 1945.

During World War II, it became clear to Orwell that anti-Soviet literature was not something which most major publishing houses would touch – including his regular publisher Gollancz. He also submitted the manuscript to Faber and Faber, where the poet T. S. Eliot (who was a director of the firm) rejected it; Eliot wrote back to Orwell praising the book’s “good writing” and “fundamental integrity”, but declared that they would only accept it for publication if they had some sympathy for the viewpoint “which I take to be generally Trotskyite“. Eliot said he found the view “not convincing”, and contended that the pigs were made out to be the best to run the farm; he posited that someone might argue “what was needed … was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs”.^[55] Orwell let André Deutsch, who was working for Nicholson & Watson in 1944, read the typescript, and Deutsch was convinced that Nicholson & Watson would want to publish it; however, they did not, and “lectured Orwell on what they perceived to be errors in Animal Farm“.^[56] In his London Letter on 17 April 1944 for Partisan Review, Orwell wrote that it was “now next door to impossible to get anything overtly anti-Russian printed. Anti-Russian books do appear, but mostly from Catholic publishing firms and always from a religious or frankly reactionary angle”.

The publisher Jonathan Cape, who had initially accepted Animal Farm, subsequently rejected the book after an official at the British Ministry of Information warned him off^[57] – although the civil servant who it is assumed gave the order was later found to be a Soviet spy.^[58] Writing to Leonard Moore, a partner in the literary agency of Christy & Moore, publisher Jonathan Cape explained that the decision had been taken on the advice of a senior official in the Ministry of Information. Such flagrant anti-Soviet bias was unacceptable, and the choice of pigs as the dominant class was thought to be especially offensive. It may reasonably be assumed that the “important official” was a man named Peter Smollett, who was later unmasked as a Soviet agent.^[59] Orwell was suspicious of Smollett/Smolka, and he would be one of the names Orwell included in his list of Crypto-Communists and Fellow-Travellers sent to the Information Research Department in 1949. The publisher wrote to Orwell, saying:^[57]

If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships.

Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

Frederic Warburg also faced pressures against publication, even from people in his own office and from his wife Pamela, who felt that it was not the moment for ingratitude towards Stalin and the Red Army,^[60] which had played a major part in defeating Adolf Hitler. A Russian translation was printed in the paper Posev, and in permitting a Russian translation of Animal Farm, Orwell refused in advance all royalties. A translation in Ukrainian, which was produced in Germany, was confiscated in large part by the American wartime authorities and handed over to the Soviet repatriation commission.^[e]

In October 1945, Orwell wrote to Frederic Warburg expressing interest in pursuing the possibility that the political cartoonist David Low might illustrate Animal Farm. Low had written a letter saying that he had had “a good time with Animal Farm – an excellent bit of satire – it would illustrate perfectly”. Nothing came of this, and a trial issue produced by Secker & Warburg in 1956 illustrated by John Driver was abandoned. The Folio Society published an edition in 1984 illustrated by Quentin Blake and an edition illustrated by the cartoonist Ralph Steadman was published by Secker & Warburg in 1995 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first edition of Animal Farm.^[61][62]

Preface

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Orwell originally wrote a preface complaining about British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally:

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary … Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact.

Although the first edition allowed space for the preface in the author’s proof, it was not included, and the page numbers had to be renumbered at the last minute.^[54] As of June 2009, most editions of the book have not included it.^[63]

In 1972, Ian Angus found the original typescript titled “The Freedom of the Press”, and Bernard Crick published it, together with his introduction, in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972 as “How the essay came to be written”.^[54] Orwell’s essay criticised British self-censorship by the press, specifically the suppression of unflattering descriptions of Stalin and the Soviet government.^[54] The same essay also appeared in the Italian 1976 edition of Animal Farm with another introduction by Crick, claiming to be the first edition with the preface. Other publishers were still declining to publish it.^{[clarification needed]}

Reception

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Contemporary reviews of the work were not universally positive. Writing in the American New Republic magazine, George Soule expressed his disappointment in the book, writing that it “puzzled and saddened me. It seemed on the whole dull. The allegory turned out to be a creaking machine for saying in a clumsy way things that have been said better directly”. Soule believed that the animals were not consistent enough with their real-world inspirations, and said, “It seems to me that the failure of this book (commercially it is already assured of tremendous success) arises from the fact that the satire deals not with something the author has experienced, but rather with stereotyped ideas about a country which he probably does not know very well”.^[64]

The Guardian on 24 August 1945 called Animal Farm “a delightfully humorous and caustic satire on the rule of the many by the few”.^[65] Tosco Fyvel, writing in Tribune on the same day, called the book “a gentle satire on a certain State and on the illusions of an age which may already be behind us”. Julian Symons responded, on 7 September, “Should we not expect, in Tribune at least, acknowledgement of the fact that it is a satire not at all gentle upon a particular State – Soviet Russia? It seems to me that a reviewer should have the courage to identify Napoleon with Stalin, and Snowball with Trotsky, and express an opinion favourable or unfavourable to the author, upon a political ground. In a hundred years perhaps, Animal Farm may be simply a fairy story; today it is a political satire with a good deal of point”. Animal Farm has been subject to much comment in the decades since these early remarks.^[66]

Between 1952 and 1957, the CIA, in an operation codenamed Aedinosaur, sent millions of balloons carrying copies of the novel into Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, whose air forces tried to shoot the balloons down.^[51] The Information Research Department, a secret Cold War propaganda agency of the British government, translated the book into various languages such as Arabic.^[67]

Time magazine chose Animal Farm as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005);^[13] it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels.^[14] It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.^[17]

Popular reading in schools, Animal Farm was ranked the UK’s favourite book from school in a 2016 poll.^[68]

Animal Farm has also faced an array of challenges in school settings around the US.^[69] The following are examples of this controversy that has existed around Orwell’s work:

• The John Birch Society in Wisconsin challenged the reading of Animal Farm in 1965 because of its reference to the masses revolting.^[69][70]
• New York State English Council’s Committee on Defense Against Censorship found that in 1968, Animal Farm had been widely deemed a “problem book”.^[69]
• A censorship survey conducted in DeKalb County, Georgia, relating to the years 1979–1982, revealed that many schools had attempted to limit access to Animal Farm due to its “political theories”.^[69]
• A superintendent in Bay County, Florida, banned Animal Farm at the middle school and high school levels in 1987.^[69]
  • The Board quickly brought back the book, however, after receiving complaints of the ban as “unconstitutional”.^[69]
• Animal Farm was removed from the Stonington, Connecticut school district curriculum in 2017.^[71]

Animal Farm has also faced similar forms of resistance in other countries.^[69] The ALA also mentions the way that the book was prevented from being featured at the International Book Fair in Moscow, Russia, in 1977 and banned from schools in the United Arab Emirates for references to practices or actions that defy Arab or Islamic beliefs, such as pigs or alcohol.^[69]

In the same manner, Animal Farm has also faced relatively recent issues in China. In 2018, the Chinese government decided to censor all online posts about or referring to Animal Farm.^[72] However, the book itself, as of 2019, remains sold in stores. Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of The Atlantic stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in mainland China for several reasons: censors believe the general public is unlikely to read a highbrow book, because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway, and because the Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated: “It was – and remains – as easy to buy 1984 and Animal Farm in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles”.^[73] An enhanced version of the book, launched in India in 2017, was widely praised for capturing the author’s intent, by republishing the proposed preface of the First Edition and the preface he wrote for the Ukrainian edition.^[74]

Analysis

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Animalism

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“Seven Commandments” redirects here. For the Noahide code, see Seven Laws of Noah. For The Bronx Is Burning episode, see The Seven Commandments.

Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer adapt Old Major’s ideas into “a complete system of thought”, which they formally name Animalism, an allegoric reference to Communism, not to be confused with the philosophy of Animalism. Soon after, Napoleon and Squealer partake in activities associated with the humans (drinking alcohol, sleeping in beds, trading), which were explicitly prohibited by the Seven Commandments. Squealer is employed to alter the Seven Commandments to account for this humanisation, an allusion to the Soviet government’s revising of history to exercise control of the people’s beliefs about themselves and their society.^[75]

The original commandments are:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

These commandments are also distilled into the maxim “Four legs good, two legs bad!” which is primarily used by the sheep on the farm, often to disrupt discussions and disagreements between animals on the nature of Animalism.

Later, Napoleon and his pigs secretly revise some commandments to clear themselves of accusations of law-breaking. The changed commandments are as follows, with the changes bolded:

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.
7. All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

Eventually, these are replaced with the maxims, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, and “Four legs good, two legs better” as the pigs become more anthropomorphic. This is an ironic twist to the original purpose of the Seven Commandments, which was supposed to keep order within Animal Farm by uniting the animals together against the humans and preventing animals from following the humans’ evil habits. Through the revision of the commandments, Orwell demonstrates how simply political dogma can be turned into malleable propaganda.^[76]

Significance and allegory

[edit]

Orwell biographer Jeffrey Meyers has written, “virtually every detail has political significance in this allegory”.^[77] Orwell himself wrote in 1946, “Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution … [and] that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters [–] revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert”.^[78] In a preface for a 1947 Ukrainian edition, he stated, “for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement. On my return from Spain [in 1937] I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages”.^[79]

The revolt of the animals against Farmer Jones is Orwell’s analogy with the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Battle of the Cowshed has been said to represent the allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918,^[28] and the defeat of the White Russians in the Russian Civil War.^[27] The pigs’ rise to preeminence mirrors the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, just as Napoleon’s emergence as the farm’s sole leader reflects Stalin’s emergence.^[29] The pigs’ appropriation of milk and apples for their own use, “the turning point of the story” as Orwell termed it in a letter to Dwight Macdonald,^[78] stands as an analogy for the crushing of the left-wing 1921 Kronstadt revolt against the Bolsheviks,^[78] and the difficult efforts of the animals to build the windmill suggest the various five-year plans. The puppies controlled by Napoleon parallel the nurture of the secret police in the Stalinist structure, and the pigs’ treatment of the other animals on the farm recalls the internal terror faced by the populace in the 1930s.^[80] In chapter seven, when the animals confess their non-existent crimes and are killed, Orwell directly alludes to the purges, confessions and show trials of the late 1930s. These contributed to Orwell’s conviction that the Bolshevik revolution had been corrupted and the Soviet system become rotten.^[81]

Peter Edgerly Firchow and Peter Davison contend that the Battle of the Windmill, specifically referencing the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow, represents World War II.^[27][28] During the battle, Orwell first wrote, “All the animals, including Napoleon” took cover. Orwell had the publisher alter this to “All the animals except Napoleon” in recognition of Stalin’s decision to remain in Moscow during the German advance.^[82] Orwell requested the change after he met Józef Czapski in Paris in March 1945. Czapski, a survivor of the Katyn Massacre and an opponent of the Soviet regime, told Orwell, as Orwell wrote to Arthur Koestler, that it had been “the character [and] greatness of Stalin” that saved Russia from the German invasion.^[f]

Other connections that writers have suggested illustrate Orwell’s telescoping of Russian history from 1917 to 1943,^[84][g] including the wave of rebelliousness that ran through the countryside after the Rebellion, which stands for the abortive revolutions in Hungary and Germany (Ch. IV); the conflict between Napoleon and Snowball (Ch. V), parallelling “the two rival and quasi-Messianic beliefs that seemed pitted against one another: Trotskyism, with its faith in the revolutionary vocation of the proletariat of the West; and Stalinism with its glorification of Russia’s socialist destiny“;^[85] Napoleon’s dealings with Whymper and the Willingdon markets (Ch. VI), paralleling the Treaty of Rapallo; and Frederick’s forged bank notes, parallelling the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, after which Frederick attacks Animal Farm without warning and destroys the windmill.^[25]

The book’s close, with the pigs and men in a kind of rapprochement, reflected Orwell’s view of the 1943 Tehran Conference^[h] that seemed to display the establishment of “the best possible relations between the USSR and the West” – but in reality were destined, as Orwell presciently predicted, to continue to unravel.^[86] The disagreement between the allies and the start of the Cold War is suggested when Napoleon and Pilkington, both suspicious, each “played an ace of spades simultaneously”.^[82]

Similarly, the music in the novel, starting with “Beasts of England” and the later anthems, parallels “The Internationale” and its adoption and repudiation by the Soviet authorities as the anthem of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s.^[87]

According to Masha Gessen, the metamorphosis of the eighth commandment (“some animals are more equal”) was likely inspired by similar change of a party line which declared all Soviet people equal: the Russian nation and language suddenly became “first among equals” in official CPSU publications in 1936–1937.^[88]

Adaptations

[edit]

Stage productions

[edit]

A theatrical version, with music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell, was staged at the National Theatre London on 25 April 1984, directed by Peter Hall. It toured nine cities in 1985.^[89]

A solo version, adapted and performed by Guy Masterson, premiered at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh in January 1995 and has toured worldwide since.^[90][91]

In 2021, during pandemic restrictions, the National Youth Theatre toured a stage version of Animal Farm; this run included outdoor performances on a farm at Soulton Hall.^[92]

A new adaptation written and directed by Robert Icke, designed by Bunny Christie with puppetry designed and directed by Toby Olié opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in January 2022 before touring the UK.^[93]

The Russian composer Alexander Raskatov has written an opera based on the book. Its premiere took place on 4 March 2023 in Amsterdam as part of Dutch National Opera‘s 2022/2023 season.^[94]

Films

[edit]

Animal Farm has been adapted to film twice. Both differ from the novel and have been accused of taking significant liberties, including sanitising some aspects.^{[citation needed]}

• Animal Farm (1954) is an animated film, in which Napoleon is eventually overthrown in a second revolution. In 1974, E. Howard Hunt revealed that he had been sent by the CIA‘s Psychological Warfare department to obtain the film rights from Orwell’s widow, and the resulting 1954 animation was funded by the agency.^[95][96]
• Animal Farm (1999) is a live-action TV version that shows Napoleon’s regime collapsing in on itself, with the farm having new human owners, reflecting the collapse of Soviet communism.^[97]

Andy Serkis is directing an upcoming animated film adaptation.^[98]

Radio dramatisations

[edit]

A BBC radio version, produced by Rayner Heppenstall, was broadcast in January 1947. Orwell listened to the production at his home in Canonbury Square, London, with Hugh Gordon Porteous, amongst others. Orwell later wrote to Heppenstall that Porteous, “who had not read the book, grasped what was happening after a few minutes”.^[99]

A further radio production, again using Orwell’s dramatisation of the book, was broadcast in January 2013 on BBC Radio 4. Tamsin Greig narrated, and the cast included Nicky Henson as Napoleon, Toby Jones as the propagandist Squealer, and Ralph Ineson as Boxer.^[100]

Comic strip

[edit]

In 1950, Norman Pett and his writing partner Don Freeman were secretly hired by the Information Research Department, a secret department of the Foreign Office, to adapt Animal Farm into a comic strip. This comic was not published in the United Kingdom but ran in Brazilian and Burmese newspapers.^[101]

Video game

[edit]

Developers Nerial and The Dairymen released a game based on the book in December 2020, entitled Orwell’s Animal Farm, for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android in coordination with the Orwell Estate.

For other uses, see Animal (disambiguation). “Animalia” redirects here. For other uses, see Animalia (disambiguation).

Animals Temporal range: Cryogenian – present, 665–0 Ma Pha.ProterozoicArcheanHad.
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Clade:	Amorphea
Clade:	Obazoa
Clade:	Opisthokonta
Clade:	Holozoa
Clade:	Filozoa
Clade:	Choanozoa
Kingdom:	Animalia Linnaeus, 1758
Subdivisions
Bilateria (~30 phyla)CnidariaCtenophoraPlacozoaPorifera
Synonyms
Metazoa Haeckel 1874[1]Choanoblastaea Nielsen 2008[2]Gastrobionta Rothm. 1948[3]Zooaea Barkley 1939[3]Euanimalia Barkley 1939[3]

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia (/ˌænɪˈmeɪliə/^[4]). 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. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5 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. Animal 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 behaviour is known as ethology.

The animal kingdom is divided into five infrakingdoms/superphyla, namely Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Bilateria. Most living animal species belong to the infrakingdom Bilateria, a highly proliferative clade whose members have a bilaterally symmetric and significantly cephalised body plan, and the vast majority of bilaterians belong to two large superphyla: the protostomes, which includes organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter of which contains the vertebrates. The much smaller basal phylum Xenacoelomorpha have an uncertain position within Bilateria.

Animals first appeared in the fossil record in the late Cryogenian period and diversified in the subsequent Ediacaran period in what is known as the Avalon explosion. Earlier evidence of animals is still controversial; the sponge-like organism Otavia has been dated back to the Tonian period at the start of the Neoproterozoic, but its identity as an animal is heavily contested.^[5] Nearly all modern animal phyla first appeared 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. Common to all living animals, 6,331 groups of genes have been identified that may have arisen from a single common ancestor that lived about 650 Mya during the Cryogenian period.

Historically, Aristotle divided animals into those with blood and those without. Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical biological classification for animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals. In modern times, the biological classification of animals relies on advanced techniques, such as molecular phylogenetics, which are effective at demonstrating the evolutionary relationships between taxa.

Humans make use of many other animal species for food (including meat, eggs, and dairy products), for materials (such as leather, fur, and wool), as pets and as working animals for transportation, and services. Dogs, the first domesticated animal, have been used in hunting, in security and in warfare, as have horses, pigeons and birds of prey; while other terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sports, trophies or profits. Non-human animals are also an important cultural element of human evolution, having appeared in cave arts and totems since the earliest times, and are frequently featured in mythology, religion, arts, literature, heraldry, politics, and sports.

Etymology

The word animal comes from the Latin noun animal of the same meaning, which is itself derived from Latin animalis ‘having breath or soul’.^[6] The biological definition includes all members of the kingdom Animalia.^[7] In colloquial usage, the term animal is often used to refer only to nonhuman animals.^{[8][9][10][11]} The term metazoa is derived from Ancient Greek μετα meta ‘after’ (in biology, the prefix meta- stands for ‘later’) and ζῷᾰ zōia ‘animals’, plural of ζῷον zōion ‘animal’.^[12][13]

Characteristics

Animals have several characteristics that they share with other living things. Animals are eukaryotic, multicellular, and aerobic, as are plants and fungi.^[14] Unlike plants and algae, which produce their own food,^[15] animals cannot produce their own food^[16][17] a feature they share with fungi. Animals ingest organic material and digest it internally.^[18]

Structural features

Animals have structural characteristics that set them apart from all other living things:

• cells surrounded by an extracellular matrix^[19] composed of
  • collagen^[20] and
  • elastic glycoproteins^[19][21]
• motility^[22] i.e. able to spontaneously move their bodies during at least part of their life cycle.

• a blastula stage during embryonic development^[23]
• cell junctions
  • tight junctions,
  • gap junctions, and
  • desmosomes^[24]
• tissues^[25]
  • muscles, which enable locomotion, and
  • nerve tissues, which transmit signals and coordinate the body.

Typically, there is an internal digestive chamber with either one opening (in Ctenophora, Cnidaria, and flatworms) or two openings (in most bilaterians).^[26]

Development

Animal development is controlled by Hox genes, which signal the times and places to develop structures such as body segments and limbs.^[27][28]

During development, the animal extracellular matrix forms a relatively flexible framework upon which cells can move about and be reorganised into specialised tissues and organs, making the formation of complex structures possible, and allowing cells to be differentiated.^[29] The extracellular matrix may be calcified, forming structures such as shells, bones, and spicules.^[30] In contrast, the cells of other multicellular organisms (primarily algae, plants, and fungi) are held in place by cell walls, and so develop by progressive growth.^[31]

Reproduction

See also: Sexual reproduction § Animals, and Asexual reproduction § Examples in animals

Nearly all animals make use of some form of sexual reproduction.^[32] They produce haploid gametes by meiosis; the smaller, motile gametes are spermatozoa and the larger, non-motile gametes are ova.^[33] These fuse to form zygotes,^[34] which develop via mitosis into a hollow sphere, called a blastula. In sponges, blastula larvae swim to a new location, attach to the seabed, and develop into a new sponge.^[35] In most other groups, the blastula undergoes more complicated rearrangement.^[36] It first invaginates to form a gastrula with a digestive chamber and two separate germ layers, an external ectoderm and an internal endoderm.^[37] In most cases, a third germ layer, the mesoderm, also develops between them.^[38] These germ layers then differentiate to form tissues and organs.^[39]

Repeated instances of mating with a close relative during sexual reproduction generally leads to inbreeding depression within a population due to the increased prevalence of harmful recessive traits.^[40][41] Animals have evolved numerous mechanisms for avoiding close inbreeding.^[42]

Some animals are capable of asexual reproduction, which often results in a genetic clone of the parent. This may take place through fragmentation; budding, such as in Hydra and other cnidarians; or parthenogenesis, where fertile eggs are produced without mating, such as in aphids.^[43][44]

Ecology

Animals are categorised into ecological groups depending on their trophic levels and how they consume organic material. Such groupings include carnivores (further divided into subcategories such as piscivores, insectivores, ovivores, etc.), herbivores (subcategorised into folivores, graminivores, frugivores, granivores, nectarivores, algivores, etc.), omnivores, fungivores, scavengers/detritivores,^[45] and parasites.^[46] Interactions between animals of each biome form complex food webs within that ecosystem. In carnivorous or omnivorous species, predation is a consumer–resource interaction where the predator feeds on another organism, its prey,^[47] who often evolves anti-predator adaptations to avoid being fed upon. Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various antagonistic/competitive coevolutions.^[48][49] Almost all multicellular predators are animals.^[50] Some consumers use multiple methods; for example, in parasitoid wasps, the larvae feed on the hosts’ living tissues, killing them in the process,^[51] but the adults primarily consume nectar from flowers.^[52] Other animals may have very specific feeding behaviours, such as hawksbill sea turtles which mainly eat sponges.^[53]

Most animals rely on biomass and bioenergy produced by plants and phytoplanktons (collectively called producers) through photosynthesis. Herbivores, as primary consumers, eat the plant material directly to digest and absorb the nutrients, while carnivores and other animals on higher trophic levels indirectly acquire the nutrients by eating the herbivores or other animals that have eaten the herbivores. Animals oxidise carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and other biomolecules, which allows the animal to grow and to sustain basal metabolism and fuel other biological processes such as locomotion.^[54][55] Some benthic animals living close to hydrothermal vents and cold seeps on the dark sea floor consume organic matter produced through chemosynthesis (via oxidising inorganic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide) by archaea and bacteria.^[56]

Animals evolved in the sea. Lineages of arthropods colonised land around the same time as land plants, probably between 510 and 471 million years ago during the Late Cambrian or Early Ordovician.^[57] Vertebrates such as the lobe-finned fish Tiktaalik started to move on to land in the late Devonian, about 375 million years ago.^[58][59] Animals occupy virtually all of earth’s habitats and microhabitats, with faunas adapted to salt water, hydrothermal vents, fresh water, hot springs, swamps, forests, pastures, deserts, air, and the interiors of other organisms.^[60] Animals are however not particularly heat tolerant; very few of them can survive at constant temperatures above 50 °C (122 °F)^[61] or in the most extreme cold deserts of continental Antarctica.^[62]

Diversity

Size

Further information: Largest organisms and Smallest organisms

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal that has ever lived, weighing up to 190 tonnes and measuring up to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long.^[63][64] The largest extant terrestrial animal is the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), weighing up to 12.25 tonnes^[63] and measuring up to 10.67 metres (35.0 ft) long.^[63] The largest terrestrial animals that ever lived were titanosaur sauropod dinosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which may have weighed as much as 73 tonnes, and Supersaurus which may have reached 39 metres.^[65][66] Several animals are microscopic; some Myxozoa (obligate parasites within the Cnidaria) never grow larger than 20 μm,^[67] and one of the smallest species (Myxobolus shekel) is no more than 8.5 μm when fully grown.^[68]

• The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived; it can be up to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long.
• Myxozoans such as Myxobolus cerebralis are single-celled parasites, never more than 20 μm across.

Numbers and habitats of major phyla

The following table lists estimated numbers of described extant species for the major animal phyla,^[69] along with their principal habitats (terrestrial, fresh water,^[70] and marine),^[71] and free-living or parasitic ways of life.^[72] Species estimates shown here are based on numbers described scientifically; much larger estimates have been calculated based on various means of prediction, and these can vary wildly. For instance, around 25,000–27,000 species of nematodes have been described, while published estimates of the total number of nematode species include 10,000–20,000; 500,000; 10 million; and 100 million.^[73] Using patterns within the taxonomic hierarchy, the total number of animal species—including those not yet described—was calculated to be about 7.77 million in 2011.^[74][75][a]

Phylum	Example	Species	Land	Sea	Freshwater	Free-living	Parasitic
Arthropoda		1,257,000[69]	Yes 1,000,000 (insects)[77]	Yes >40,000 (Malac- ostraca)[78]	Yes 94,000[70]	Yes[71]	Yes >45,000[b][72]
Mollusca		85,000[69] 107,000[79]	35,000[79]	60,000[79]	5,000[70] 12,000[79]	Yes[71]	>5,600[72]
Chordata		>70,000[69][80]	23,000[81]	13,000[81]	18,000[70] 9,000[81]	Yes	40 (catfish)[82][72]
Platyhelminthes		29,500[69]	Yes[83]	Yes[71]	1,300[70]	Yes[71] 3,000–6,500[84]	>40,000[72] 4,000–25,000[84]
Nematoda		25,000[69]	Yes (soil)[71]	4,000[73]	2,000[70]	11,000[73]	14,000[73]
Annelida		17,000[69]	Yes (soil)[71]	Yes[71]	1,750[70]	Yes	400[72]
Cnidaria		16,000[69]		Yes[71]	Few[71]	Yes[71]	>1,350 (Myxozoa)[72]
Porifera		10,800[69]		Yes[71]	200–300[70]	Yes	Yes[85]
Echinodermata		7,500[69]		7,500[69]		Yes[71]
Bryozoa		6,000[69]		Yes[71]	60–80[70]	Yes
Rotifera		2,000[69]		>400[86]	2,000[70]	Yes	Yes[87]
Nemertea		1,350[88][89]		Yes	Yes	Yes
Tardigrada		1,335[69]	Yes[90] (moist plants)	Yes	Yes	Yes

Evolutionary origin

Further information: Urmetazoan

Evidence of animals is found as long ago as the Cryogenian period. 24-Isopropylcholestane (24-ipc) has been found in rocks from roughly 650 million years ago; it is only produced by sponges and pelagophyte algae. Its likely origin is from sponges based on molecular clock estimates for the origin of 24-ipc production in both groups. Analyses of pelagophyte algae consistently recover a Phanerozoic origin, while analyses of sponges recover a Neoproterozoic origin, consistent with the appearance of 24-ipc in the fossil record.^[91][92]

The first body fossils of animals appear in the Ediacaran, represented by forms such as Charnia and Spriggina. It had long been doubted whether these fossils truly represented animals,^[93][94][95] but the discovery of the animal lipid cholesterol in fossils of Dickinsonia establishes their nature.^[96] Animals are thought to have originated under low-oxygen conditions, suggesting that they were capable of living entirely by anaerobic respiration, but as they became specialised for aerobic metabolism they became fully dependent on oxygen in their environments.^[97]

Many animal phyla first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion, starting about 539 million years ago, in beds such as the Burgess shale.^[98] Extant phyla in these rocks include molluscs, brachiopods, onychophorans, tardigrades, arthropods, echinoderms and hemichordates, along with numerous now-extinct forms such as the predatory Anomalocaris. The apparent suddenness of the event may however be an artefact of the fossil record, rather than showing that all these animals appeared simultaneously.^{[99][100][101][102][103]} That view is supported by the discovery of Auroralumina attenboroughii, the earliest known Ediacaran crown-group cnidarian (557–562 mya, some 20 million years before the Cambrian explosion) from Charnwood Forest, England. It is thought to be one of the earliest predators, catching small prey with its nematocysts as modern cnidarians do.^[104]

Some palaeontologists have suggested that animals appeared much earlier than the Cambrian explosion, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago.^[105] Early fossils that might represent animals appear for example in the 665-million-year-old rocks of the Trezona Formation of South Australia. These fossils are interpreted as most probably being early sponges.^[106] Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the Tonian period (from 1 gya) may indicate the presence of triploblastic worm-like animals, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms.^[107] However, similar tracks are produced by the giant single-celled protist Gromia sphaerica, so the Tonian trace fossils may not indicate early animal evolution.^[108][109] Around the same time, the layered mats of microorganisms called stromatolites decreased in diversity, perhaps due to grazing by newly evolved animals.^[110] Objects such as sediment-filled tubes that resemble trace fossils of the burrows of wormlike animals have been found in 1.2 gya rocks in North America, in 1.5 gya rocks in Australia and North America, and in 1.7 gya rocks in Australia. Their interpretation as having an animal origin is disputed, as they might be water-escape or other structures.^[111][112]

• Dickinsonia costata from the Ediacaran biota (c. 635–542 mya) is one of the earliest animal species known.^[96]
• Auroralumina attenboroughii, an Ediacaran predator (c. 560 mya)^[104]
• Anomalocaris canadensis is one of the many animal species that emerged in the Cambrian explosion, starting some 539 mya, and found in the fossil beds of the Burgess shale.

Phylogeny

Further information: Lists of animals

External phylogeny

Animals are monophyletic, meaning they are derived from a common ancestor. Animals are the sister group to the choanoflagellates, with which they form the Choanozoa.^[113] Ros-Rocher and colleagues (2021) trace the origins of animals to unicellular ancestors, providing the external phylogeny shown in the cladogram. Uncertainty of relationships is indicated with dashed lines. The animal clade had certainly originated by 650 mya, and may have come into being as much as 800 mya, based on molecular clock evidence for different phyla.^[114]

Opisthokonta	Holomycota (inc. fungi) HolozoaIchthyosporea Pluriformea FilozoaFilasterea ChoanozoaChoanoflagellateaAnimaliaover 650 mya

Internal phylogeny

The relationships at the base of the animal tree have been debated.^[115][116] Other than Ctenophora, the Bilateria and Cnidaria are the only groups with symmetry, and other evidence shows they are closely related.^[117] In addition to sponges, Placozoa has no symmetry and was often considered a “missing link” between protists and multicellular animals. The presence of hox genes in Placozoa shows that they were once more complex.^[118]

The Porifera (sponges) have long been assumed to be sister to the rest of the animals, but there is evidence that the Ctenophora may be in that position. Molecular phylogenetics has supported both the sponge-sister and ctenophore-sister hypotheses. In 2017, Roberto Feuda and colleagues, using amino acid differences, presented both, with the following cladogram for the sponge-sister view that they supported (their ctenophore-sister tree simply interchanging the places of ctenophores and sponges):^[119]

Animalia	Porifera EumetazoaCtenophora ParaHoxozoaPlacozoa Cnidaria Bilateria symmetryhox genes
multicellular

Conversely, a 2023 study by Darrin Schultz and colleagues uses ancient gene linkages to construct the following ctenophore-sister phylogeny:^[120]

Animalia	Ctenophora MyriazoaPorifera ParaHoxozoaPlacozoa Cnidaria Bilateria symmetryhox genes
multicellular

Non-bilaterians

Sponges are physically very distinct from other animals, and were long thought to have diverged first, representing the oldest animal phylum and forming a sister clade to all other animals.^[121] Despite their morphological dissimilarity with all other animals, genetic evidence suggests sponges may be more closely related to other animals than the comb jellies are.^[122][123] Sponges lack the complex organisation found in most other animal phyla;^[124] their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organised into distinct tissues, unlike all other animals.^[125] They typically feed by drawing in water through pores, filtering out small particles of food.^[126]

The Ctenophora and Cnidaria are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both mouth and anus.^[127] Animals in both phyla have distinct tissues, but these are not organised into discrete organs.^[128] They are diploblastic, having only two main germ layers, ectoderm and endoderm.^[129]

The tiny placozoans have no permanent digestive chamber and no symmetry; they superficially resemble amoebae.^[130][131] Their phylogeny is poorly defined, and under active research.^[122][132]

Bilateria

Main articles: Bilateria and Symmetry (biology) § Bilateral symmetry

The remaining animals, the great majority—comprising some 29 phyla and over a million species—form the Bilateria clade, which have a bilaterally symmetric body plan. The Bilateria are triploblastic, with three well-developed germ layers, and their tissues form distinct organs. The digestive chamber has two openings, a mouth and an anus, and in the Nephrozoa there is an internal body cavity, a coelom or pseudocoelom. These animals have a head end (anterior) and a tail end (posterior), a back (dorsal) surface and a belly (ventral) surface, and a left and a right side.^[133][134] A modern consensus phylogenetic tree for the Bilateria is shown below.^[135]

Bilateria	Xenacoelomorpha NephrozoaDeuterostomiaAmbulacraria Chordata ProtostomiaEcdysozoa Spiralia 610 mya650 Mya

Having a front end means that this part of the body encounters stimuli, such as food, favouring cephalisation, the development of a head with sense organs and a mouth. Many bilaterians have a combination of circular muscles that constrict the body, making it longer, and an opposing set of longitudinal muscles, that shorten the body;^[134] these enable soft-bodied animals with a hydrostatic skeleton to move by peristalsis.^[136] They also have a gut that extends through the basically cylindrical body from mouth to anus. Many bilaterian phyla have primary larvae which swim with cilia and have an apical organ containing sensory cells. However, over evolutionary time, descendant spaces have evolved which have lost one or more of each of these characteristics. For example, adult echinoderms are radially symmetric (unlike their larvae), while some parasitic worms have extremely simplified body structures.^[133][134]

Genetic studies have considerably changed zoologists’ understanding of the relationships within the Bilateria. Most appear to belong to two major lineages, the protostomes and the deuterostomes.^[137] It is often suggested that the basalmost bilaterians are the Xenacoelomorpha, with all other bilaterians belonging to the subclade Nephrozoa.^{[138][139][140]} However, this suggestion has been contested, with other studies finding that xenacoelomorphs are more closely related to Ambulacraria than to other bilaterians.^[141]

Protostomes and deuterostomes

Further information: Embryological origins of the mouth and anus

Main articles: Protostome and Deuterostome

Protostomes and deuterostomes differ in several ways. Early in development, deuterostome embryos undergo radial cleavage during cell division, while many protostomes (the Spiralia) undergo spiral cleavage.^[142] Animals from both groups possess a complete digestive tract, but in protostomes the first opening of the embryonic gut develops into the mouth, and the anus forms secondarily. In deuterostomes, the anus forms first while the mouth develops secondarily.^[143][144] Most protostomes have schizocoelous development, where cells simply fill in the interior of the gastrula to form the mesoderm. In deuterostomes, the mesoderm forms by enterocoelic pouching, through invagination of the endoderm.^[145]

The main deuterostome phyla are the Ambulacraria and the Chordata.^[146] Ambulacraria are exclusively marine and include acorn worms, starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers.^[147] The chordates are dominated by the vertebrates (animals with backbones),^[148] which consist of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.^{[149][150][151]}

The protostomes include the Ecdysozoa, named after their shared trait of ecdysis, growth by moulting,^[152] Among the largest ecdysozoan phyla are the arthropods and the nematodes.^[153] The rest of the protostomes are in the Spiralia, named for their pattern of developing by spiral cleavage in the early embryo. Major spiralian phyla include the annelids and molluscs.^[154]

History of classification

Further information: Taxonomy (biology), History of zoology through 1859, and History of zoology since 1859

In the classical era, Aristotle divided animals,^[d] based on his own observations, into those with blood (roughly, the vertebrates) and those without. The animals were then arranged on a scale from man (with blood, two legs, rational soul) down through the live-bearing tetrapods (with blood, four legs, sensitive soul) and other groups such as crustaceans (no blood, many legs, sensitive soul) down to spontaneously generating creatures like sponges (no blood, no legs, vegetable soul). Aristotle was uncertain whether sponges were animals, which in his system ought to have sensation, appetite, and locomotion, or plants, which did not: he knew that sponges could sense touch and would contract if about to be pulled off their rocks, but that they were rooted like plants and never moved about.^[156]

In 1758, Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical classification in his Systema Naturae.^[157] In his original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then, the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and Vermes have been renamed or broken up. The process was begun in 1793 by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, who called the Vermes une espèce de chaos (‘a chaotic mess’)^[e] and split the group into three new phyla: worms, echinoderms, and polyps (which contained corals and jellyfish). By 1809, in his Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck had created nine phyla apart from vertebrates (where he still had four phyla: mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish) and molluscs, namely cirripedes, annelids, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, worms, radiates, polyps, and infusorians.^[155]

In his 1817 Le Règne Animal, Georges Cuvier used comparative anatomy to group the animals into four embranchements (‘branches’ with different body plans, roughly corresponding to phyla), namely vertebrates, molluscs, articulated animals (arthropods and annelids), and zoophytes (radiata) (echinoderms, cnidaria and other forms).^[159] This division into four was followed by the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer in 1828, the zoologist Louis Agassiz in 1857, and the comparative anatomist Richard Owen in 1860.^[160]

In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms: Metazoa (multicellular animals, with five phyla: coelenterates, echinoderms, articulates, molluscs, and vertebrates) and Protozoa (single-celled animals), including a sixth animal phylum, sponges.^[161][160] The protozoa were later moved to the former kingdom Protista, leaving only the Metazoa as a synonym of Animalia.^[162]

In human culture

Practical uses

Main article: Human uses of animals

The human population exploits a large number of other animal species for food, both of domesticated livestock species in animal husbandry and, mainly at sea, by hunting wild species.^[163][164] Marine fish of many species are caught commercially for food. A smaller number of species are farmed commercially.^{[163][165][166]} Humans and their livestock make up more than 90% of the biomass of all terrestrial vertebrates, and almost as much as all insects combined.^[167]

Invertebrates including cephalopods, crustaceans, insects—principally bees and silkworms—and bivalve or gastropod molluscs are hunted or farmed for food, fibres.^[168][169] Chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs, and other animals are raised as livestock for meat across the world.^{[164][170][171]} Animal fibres such as wool and silk are used to make textiles, while animal sinews have been used as lashings and bindings, and leather is widely used to make shoes and other items. Animals have been hunted and farmed for their fur to make items such as coats and hats.^[172] Dyestuffs including carmine (cochineal),^[173][174] shellac,^[175][176] and kermes^[177][178] have been made from the bodies of insects. Working animals including cattle and horses have been used for work and transport from the first days of agriculture.^[179]

Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models.^{[180][181][182][183]} Animals have been used to create vaccines since their discovery in the 18th century.^[184] Some medicines such as the cancer drug trabectedin are based on toxins or other molecules of animal origin.^[185]

People have used hunting dogs to help chase down and retrieve animals,^[186] and birds of prey to catch birds and mammals,^[187] while tethered cormorants have been used to catch fish.^[188] Poison dart frogs have been used to poison the tips of blowpipe darts.^[189][190] A wide variety of animals are kept as pets, from invertebrates such as tarantulas, octopuses, and praying mantises,^[191] reptiles such as snakes and chameleons,^[192] and birds including canaries, parakeets, and parrots^[193] all finding a place. However, the most kept pet species are mammals, namely dogs, cats, and rabbits.^{[194][195][196]} There is a tension between the role of animals as companions to humans, and their existence as individuals with rights of their own.^[197]

A wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sport.^[198]

Symbolic uses

The signs of the Western and Chinese zodiacs are based on animals.^[199][200] In China and Japan, the butterfly has been seen as the personification of a person’s soul,^[201] and in classical representation the butterfly is also the symbol of the soul.^[202][203]

Animals have been the subjects of art from the earliest times, both historical, as in ancient Egypt, and prehistoric, as in the cave paintings at Lascaux. Major animal paintings include Albrecht Dürer‘s 1515 The Rhinoceros, and George Stubbs‘s c. 1762 horse portrait Whistlejacket.^[204] Insects, birds and mammals play roles in literature and film,^[205] such as in giant bug movies.^{[206][207][208]}

Animals including insects^[201] and mammals^[209] feature in mythology and religion. The scarab beetle was sacred in ancient Egypt,^[210] and the cow is sacred in Hinduism.^[211] Among other mammals, deer,^[209] horses,^[212] lions,^[213] bats,^[214] bears,^[215] and wolves^[216] are the subjects of myths and worship.