What is a chordate? How are vertebrates different from chordates?
A chordate is an animal that is part of the large phylum Chordata. When talking about chordates, think about invertebrate animals. Vertebrate animals include things such as; limbs, jaws, brain and skull that are not present in the invertebrate animals. Chordates lack backbone as well as head, skull, limbs and basically all the things that the vertebrates have. Some chordates, however, can have heads. For example, snails and slugs have a head right? Chordates and vertebrates may have their differences, but there’s also similarities.
There’s another similarity between chordates and vertebrates. It’s that both of them have bilateral symmetry. Animals have body symmetry, either radial or bilateral symmetry. Radial symmetry is when if you split something vertical and horizontal the shapes will be identical with each other. For bilateral symmetry only a certain part that has been split will be identical to each other leaving the other part non symmetrical.
Thanks for reading this essay. I hope you enjoyed my quick thoughts about this topic. I’ll be posting more soon and have a great rest of your day!
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