Ferae is a
cladeA clade is a term used in modern alpha taxonomy, the scientific classification of living and fossil organisms, to describe a monophyletic group, defined as a group consisting of a single common ancestor and all its descendants.[The term "monophyletic group" is used in this article...]
of
mammalMammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands while both males and females are characterized by sweat glands, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.Mammals are divided into three main...
s, consisting of the
orderIn scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...
s
CarnivoraThe diverse order Carnivora includes over 260 species of placental mammals. Its members are formally referred to as carnivorans, while the word "carnivore" can refer to any meat-eating animal...
(over 260 species, across the globe) and Pholidota (8 species of pangolin in tropical
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
and
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
).
PangolinA pangolin , also scaly anteater or trenggiling, is a mammal of the order Pholidota. There is only one extant family and one genus of pangolins, comprising eight species. There are also a number of extinct taxa. Pangolins have large keratin scales covering their skin and are the only mammals with...
s do not look much like carnivorans (wolves, cats, seals, and so on), and were thought to be the closest relatives of
XenarthraThe superorder Xenarthra is a group of placental mammals , extant today only in the Americas. The origins of the order can be traced back as far as the early Tertiary...
(armadillos, sloths, and so on). But recent DNA research found the close relationship to Carnivores. Ferae also includes the
CreodontaThe creodonts are an extinct order of mammals that lived from the Paleocene to the Miocene epochs. They shared a common ancestor with the Carnivora....
, extinct primitive carnivoran-like mammals.
Ferae is a
cladeA clade is a term used in modern alpha taxonomy, the scientific classification of living and fossil organisms, to describe a monophyletic group, defined as a group consisting of a single common ancestor and all its descendants.[The term "monophyletic group" is used in this article...]
of
mammalMammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands while both males and females are characterized by sweat glands, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.Mammals are divided into three main...
s, consisting of the
orderIn scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...
s
CarnivoraThe diverse order Carnivora includes over 260 species of placental mammals. Its members are formally referred to as carnivorans, while the word "carnivore" can refer to any meat-eating animal...
(over 260 species, across the globe) and Pholidota (8 species of pangolin in tropical
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
and
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
).
PangolinA pangolin , also scaly anteater or trenggiling, is a mammal of the order Pholidota. There is only one extant family and one genus of pangolins, comprising eight species. There are also a number of extinct taxa. Pangolins have large keratin scales covering their skin and are the only mammals with...
s do not look much like carnivorans (wolves, cats, seals, and so on), and were thought to be the closest relatives of
XenarthraThe superorder Xenarthra is a group of placental mammals , extant today only in the Americas. The origins of the order can be traced back as far as the early Tertiary...
(armadillos, sloths, and so on). But recent DNA research found the close relationship to Carnivores. Ferae also includes the
CreodontaThe creodonts are an extinct order of mammals that lived from the Paleocene to the Miocene epochs. They shared a common ancestor with the Carnivora....
, extinct primitive carnivoran-like mammals. Several extinct orders, relatives of Pholidota, are members of Ferae as well. These orders are sometimes united with the Pholidota in one, large order:
CimolestaCimolesta is an extinct order of mammals. A few experts place the pangolins within Cimolesta, though most other experts prefer to place the pangolins within their own order, Pholidota....
. An alternate name,
Ostentoria, has also been proposed for a grouping of Carnivora and Pholidota.
According to one recent study, the closest relatives of Ferae are the Perissodactyla (horses, tapirs and rhinos) and the
CetartiodactylaCetartiodactyla is the clade to which whales and even-toed ungulates have currently been placed. The term was coined by merging the name for the two orders, Cetacea and Artiodactyla, into a single word. The term Cetartiodactyla is most commonly used to describe the classification that whales...
(which combines Artiodactyla--camels, pigs, ruminants and hippos—with
CetaceaThe order Cetacea includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Cetus is Latin and is used in biological names to mean "whale"; its original meaning, "large sea animal", was more general. It comes from Ancient Greek , meaning "whale" or "any huge fish or sea monster"...
--whales and dolphins).
Another study (reflected in the diagram below) found that the closest relatives to Ferae are Perissodactyla and Chiroptera (bats), not Cetartiodactyla. The Ferae together with Perissodactyla have been called
ZooamataZooamata is a proposed clade of mammals consisting of Ferae and Perissodactyla . Together with Cetartiodactyla and chiroptera it forms Ferungulata, and is part of Laurasiatheria...
. The Ferae, Perissodactyla, and Chiroptera together have been called
PegasoferaePegasoferae is a recently proposed superorder of mammals based on genomic research in molecular systematics by Nishihara, Hasegawa and Okada...
.