As scientists usually say, an animal is any living thing (including people ) that is not a plant. no one knows how many different species of wild plants and animals there are on our planet. people occasionally discover hundreds of new kinds every year. in what way are animals different from plants? this question is not always easy to answer. animals can be mammals (elephant, cows , lions, tigers, cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, sharks, whales ) and non-mammals (crocodiles, snakes, fish, birds, animals and plants get their food differently: animals eat plants or other animals, while plants get their food from the air and soil with the help of their leaves and roots. but we know that some plants catch and eat insects. also animals can easily move about, while plants grow in the same place. but there are some plants that can travel and some animals that never leave their place. as you see plants and animals have very much in common. there are more than 300000 different species of plants on the earth. some plants grow very tall and live a very long life. other plants are so tiny that you can see them only through a microscope. the same is true about animals. you can constantly find plants and animals in the oceans and deserts, in mountains and in cold tundra plains. when people first learned to cultivate plants and domestic animals, our civilization began. we can't live without them. plants are able to use sunlight to build themselves up. they use carbon dioxide gas and breathe out life-giving oxygen. they support life on the planet. переведите
