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| Carnivora
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Canidae Felidae Herpestidae Hyaenidae Mephitidae Mustelidae Nandiniidae Odobenidae Pinnipedia Procyonidae Ursidae Viverridae |
The diverse orderOrder is one of the levels of scientific classification of organisms. Orders are grouped into classes and themselves contain families. The standard groupings of taxonomy from most general to most specific are: Domain Kingdom Phylum (animals); Division (pl Carnivora includes over 260 placental mammals. While the Giant PandaThe Giant Panda ( Chinese: ; pinyin: xiong mo), Ailuropoda melanoleuca ("black-and-white cat-foot"), is a mammal now usually classified in the bear family, Ursidae, that is native to central China. The Giant Panda lives in mountainous regions, like Sichua is an herbivore, nearly all others eat meat as their primary diet item: some (like the cat family) almost exclusively, others (like the bears and foxes) are more omnivorous. Members of Carnivora have a characteristic skull shape, and their dentitionDentition is the development of teeth and their arrangement in the mouth. All mammals except the monotremes, the edentates, the pangolins, and the cetaceans have up to four distinct types of teeth, with a maximum number for each. These are the incisor, th includes prominent canines and carnassials.
Older classification schemes divided the order into two suborders, FissipediaCanidae Felidae Herpestidae Hyaenidae Mephitidae Procyonidae Ursidae Viverridae The suborder Fissipedia are the land-based members of the Carnivora order. By and large members of the sub-order are meat-eaters the Giant Panda is the notable exception., which included the families of primarily land carnivores, and suborder Pinnipedia, which included the true seals, eared seals, and walrus.
Newer classification schemes, which have been able to integrate the findings from molecular techniques for discovering genetic relationships, generally divide the Carnivora into suborders Feliformia and Caniformia, which includes the pinnipeds.
Recent molecular studies suggest that the endemic Carnivora of Madagascar, including three genera classed with the Viverridae and four genera of "mongooses" classed with the Herpestidae, are all descended from a single ancestor, and form a single sister taxon to the Herpestidae.