the.com/invertebrate
97% of animal species, 0% of the spine, 100% of the hustle.
means An animal without a backbone — the catch-all category covering insects, worms, mollusks, crustaceans, and more.
from Built from Latin in- ('not') plus vertebra ('joint, spine'), itself from vertere ('to turn') — the same root behind 'vertex' and 'convert.' Coined as the deliberate opposite of 'vertebrate' when naturalists in the early 1800s, notably Lamarck, needed one tidy word for every animal lacking a backbone — which turned out to be the overwhelming majority of life on Earth.
- definition
- any animal lacking a backbone
- majority rules
- covers roughly 97 percent of known species
- octopus flex
- three hearts, no spine, still outsmarts you
- ancient résumé
- jellyfish predate backbones by hundreds of millions of years