Invertebrate of the year 2024: all hail Earth's spineless heroes

Highly diverse and charismatic, these creatures deserve recognition as a sixth great extinction dawnsWe are prone to obsessing over ourselves and over animals like us. But most of the life on Earth is not like us at all. Barely 5% of all known living creatures are animals with backbones. The rest - at least 1.3 million species, and many more still to be discovered - are spineless.All hail the invertebrates, animals of wondrous diversity, unique niches and innovative and interesting ways of making a living on this planet. They include insects (at least a million), arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals, jellyfish, sponges and echinoderms. Continue reading...