The final two descriptions test us on whether our animal has “scales” or is without them, as “no scales”. This then leads us to yet again another set of descriptions: whether our animal has “dry skin” or “moist skin”, and as seen, the animal most definitely does not have dry skin, therefore we choose “moist skin” as the correct answer. When observing the organism we wish to identify, we can see that it does not have feathers and we therefore must choose “no feathers” as the correct description. Once this answer is chosen, this leads us to another set of descriptions: whether this animal “has feathers” or has “no feathers”. When we look at this organism, we can see that it does not have fur, so we choose “no fur” as the appropriate description. The animal that we must identify is a vertebrate animal, and we must look at the first two descriptions given to us: whether our animal “has fur” or whether it has “no fur”. When reading a dichotomous key, you must always start at the top of the key. We are therefore trying to figure out and identify what this organism is, and we have a dichotomous key over here that is going to help us identify this organism. For a moment, let us give ourselves the benefit of doubt and imagine that we do not know what this organism is. (If it looks like a fish, swims like a fish and sounds(feels in this case) like a fish, one might think that it must be a fish□). Let us imagine that there is an organism that is looks like this: Given here is a simple dichotomous key that includes a few animals and the purpose of a dichotomous key is to identify an unknown organism. Let us look at an example to see if we can use the theory that we learnt in practice. This is simply the theoretical aspect of dichotomous keys.
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