chunks
stringlengths 1
1.02k
|
|---|
cil consists of between 28 and 42 councillors. The councillors serve for fouryear terms, and elections are held between the 30th and 40th days following the dissolution of the previous Council.
Half are elected in equal numbers by each of the seven administrative parishes, and the other half of the councillors are elected in a single national constituency. Fifteen days after the election, the councillors hold their inauguration. During this session, the Syndic General, who is the head of the General Council, and the Subsyndic General, his assistant, are elected. Eight days later, the Council convenes once more. During this session the head of government is chosen from among the councillors.
Candidates can be proposed by a minimum of onefifth of the councillors. The Council then elects the candidate with the absolute majority of votes to be head of government. The Syndic General then notifies the coprinces, who in turn appoint the elected candidate as the head of government of Andorra. The General Council is |
also responsible for proposing and passing laws. Bills may be presented to the council as Private Members' Bills by three of the local Parish Councils jointly or by at least one tenth of the citizens of Andorra.
The council also approves the annual budget of the principality. The government must submit the proposed budget for parliamentary approval at least two months before the previous budget expires. If the budget is not approved by the first day of the next year, the previous budget is extended until a new one is approved. Once any bill is approved, the Syndic General is responsible for presenting it to the CoPrinces so that they may sign and enact it.
If the head of government is not satisfied with the council, he may request that the coprinces dissolve the council and order new elections. In turn, the councillors have the power to remove the head of government from office. After a motion of censure is approved by at least onefifth of the councillors, the council will vote and if it receives the absol |
ute majority of votes, the head of government is removed.
Law and criminal justice
The judiciary is composed of the Magistrates Court, the Criminal Law Court, the High Court of Andorra, and the Constitutional Court. The High Court of Justice is composed of five judges one appointed by the head of government, one each by the coprinces, one by the Syndic General, and one by the judges and magistrates. It is presided over by the member appointed by the Syndic General and the judges hold office for sixyear terms.
The magistrates and judges are appointed by the High Court, as is the president of the Criminal Law Court. The High Court also appoints members of the Office of the Attorney General. The Constitutional Court is responsible for interpreting the Constitution and reviewing all appeals of unconstitutionality against laws and treaties. It is composed of four judges, one appointed by each of the coprinces and two by the General Council. They serve eightyear terms. The Court is presided over by one of the ju |
dges on a twoyear rotation so that each judge at one point will preside over the Court.
Foreign relations, defence and security
Andorra does not have its own armed forces, although there is a small ceremonial army. Responsibility for defending the nation rests primarily with France and Spain. However, in case of emergencies or natural disasters, the Sometent an alarm is called and all ablebodied men between 21 and 60 of Andorran nationality must serve. This is why all Andorrans, and especially the head of each house usually the eldest ablebodied man of a house should, by law, keep a rifle, even though the law also states that the police will offer a firearm in case of need. Andorra is a full member of the United Nations UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE, and has a special agreement with the European Union EU, it also has observer status at the World Trade Organization WTO. On 16 October 2020, Andorra became the 190th member of the International Monetary Fund IMF, during the CO |
VID19 pandemic.
Military
Andorra has a small army, which has historically been raised or reconstituted at various dates, but has never in modern times amounted to a standing army. The basic principle of Andorran defence is that all ablebodied men are available to fight if called upon by the sounding of the Sometent. Being a landlocked country, Andorra has no navy.
Before World War I, Andorra maintained an armed force of about 600 parttime militiamen under the supervision of a Captain Capit or Cap de Sometent and a Lieutenant Desener or Lloctinent del Capit. This body was not liable for service outside the principality and was commanded by two officials veguers appointed by France and the Bishop of Urgell.
In the modern era, the army has consisted of a very small body of volunteers willing to undertake ceremonial duties. Uniforms and weaponry were handed down from generation to generation within families and communities.
The army's role in internal security was largely taken over by the formation of the Po |
lice Corps of Andorra in 1931. Brief civil disorder associated with the elections of 1933 led to assistance being sought from the French National Gendarmerie, with a detachment resident in Andorra for two months under the command of RenJules Baulard. The Andorran Police was reformed in the following year, with eleven soldiers appointed to supervisory roles. The force consisted of six Corporals, one for each parish although there are currently seven parishes, there were only six until 1978, plus four junior staff officers to coordinate action, and a commander with the rank of major. It was the responsibility of the six corporals, each in his own parish, to be able to raise a fighting force from among the ablebodied men of the parish.
Today a small, twelveman ceremonial unit remains the only permanent section of the Sometent, but all ablebodied men remain technically available for military service, with a requirement for each family to have access to a firearm. A shotgun per household is unregulated. Rifles an |
d pistols require a license. The army has not fought for more than 700 years, and its main responsibility is to present the flag of Andorra at official ceremonial functions. According to Marc Forn Moln, Andorra's military budget is strictly from voluntary donations, and the availability of fulltime volunteers.
In more recent times there has only been a general emergency call to the popular army of Sometent during the floods of 1982 in the Catalan Pyrenees, where 12 citizens perished in Andorra, to help the population and establish a public order along with the Local Police units.
Police Corps
Andorra maintains a small but modern and wellequipped internal police force, with around 240 police officers supported by civilian assistants. The principal services supplied by the corps are uniformed community policing, criminal detection, border control, and traffic policing. There are also small specialist units including police dogs, mountain rescue, and a bomb disposal team.
GIPA
The Grup d'Intervenci Policia d |
'Andorra GIPA is a small special forces unit trained in counterterrorism, and hostage recovery tasks. Although it is the closest in style to an active military force, it is part of the Police Corps, and not the army. As terrorist and hostage situations are a rare threat to the country, the GIPA is commonly assigned to prisoner escort duties, and at other times to routine policing.
Fire brigade
The Andorran Fire Brigade, with headquarters at Santa Coloma, operates from four modern fire stations, and has a staff of around 120 firefighters. The service is equipped with 16 heavy appliances fire tenders, turntable ladders, and specialist fourwheel drive vehicles, four light support vehicles cars and vans and four ambulances.
Historically, the families of the six ancient parishes of Andorra maintained local arrangements to assist each other in fighting fires. The first fire pump purchased by the government was acquired in 1943. Serious fires which lasted for two days in December 1959 led to calls for a permanent |
fire service, and the Andorran Fire Brigade was formed on 21 April 1961.
The fire service maintains fulltime cover with five fire crews on duty at any time two at the brigade's headquarters in Santa Coloma, and one crew at each of the other three fire stations.
Geography
Parishes
Andorra consists of seven parishes
Andorra la Vella
Canillo
Encamp
EscaldesEngordany
La Massana
Ordino
Sant Juli de Lria
Physical geography
Due to its location in the eastern Pyrenees mountain range, Andorra consists predominantly of rugged mountains, the highest being the Coma Pedrosa at , and the average elevation of Andorra is . These are dissected by three narrow valleys in a Y shape that combine into one as the main stream, the Gran Valira river, leaves the country for Spain at Andorra's lowest point of . Andorra's land area is .
Environment
Phytogeographically, Andorra belongs to the Atlantic European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Andorr |
a belongs to the ecoregion of Pyrenees conifer and mixed forests. Andorra had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.4510, ranking it 127th globally out of 172 countries.
Important Bird Area
The whole country has been recognised as a single Important Bird Area IBA by BirdLife International, because it is important for forest and mountain birds and supports populations of redbilled choughs, citril finches and rock buntings.
Climate
Andorra has alpine, continental and oceanic climates, depending on altitude. Its higher elevation means there is, on average, more snow in winter and it is slightly cooler in summer. The diversity of landmarks, the different orientation of the valleys and the irregularity relief typical of the Mediterranean climates make the country have a great diversity of microclimates that hinder the general dominance of the high mountain climate. The great differences of altitude in the minimum and maximum points, together with the influence of a Mediterranean climate, devel |
op the climate of the Andorran Pyrenees.
When in precipitation, a global model characterized by convective and abundant rains can be defined during spring and summer, which can last until autumn May, June and August are usually the rainiest months. In winter, however, it is less rainy, except in the highlands, subject to the influence of fronts from the Atlantic, which explains the great amount of snowfall in the Andorran mountains. The temperature regime is characterized, broadly, by a temperate summer and a long and cold winter, in accordance with the mountainous condition of the Principality.
Economy
Tourism, the mainstay of Andorra's tiny, welltodo economy, accounts for roughly 80 of GDP. An estimated 10.2 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's dutyfree status and by its summer and winter resorts.
One of the main sources of income in Andorra is tourism from ski resorts which total over of ski ground. The sport brings in over 7 million visitors annually and an estimated 340 million eu |
ros per year, sustaining 2,000 direct and 10,000 indirect jobs at present since 2007.
The banking sector, with its tax haven status, also contributes substantially to the economy with revenues raised exclusively through import tariffs the financial and insurance sector accounts for approximately 19 of GDP. However, during the European sovereigndebt crisis of the 21st century, the tourist industry suffered a decline, partly caused by a drop in the prices of goods in Spain, undercutting dutyfree shopping and increasing unemployment. On 1 January 2012, a business tax of 10 was introduced, followed by a sales tax of 2 a year later, which raised just over 14 million euros in its first quarter.
Agricultural production is limited; only 1.7 of the land is arable, and most food has to be imported. Some tobacco is grown locally. The principal livestock activity is domestic sheep raising. Manufacturing output consists mainly of cigarettes, cigars, and furniture. Andorra's natural resources include hydroelectric power, |
mineral water, timber, iron ore, and lead.
Andorra is not a member of the European Union, but enjoys a special relationship with it, such as being treated as an EU member for trade in manufactured goods no tariffs and as a nonEU member for agricultural products. Andorra lacked a currency of its own and used both the French franc and the Spanish peseta in banking transactions until 31 December 1999, when both currencies were replaced by the EU's single currency, the euro. Coins and notes of both the franc and the peseta remained legal tender in Andorra until 31 December 2002. Andorra negotiated to issue its own euro coins, beginning in 2014.
Andorra has historically had one of the world's lowest unemployment rates. In 2019, it stood at 2.
On 31 May 2013, it was announced that Andorra intended to legislate for the introduction of an income tax by the end of June, against a background of increasing dissatisfaction with the existence of tax havens among EU members. The announcement was made following a meetin |
g in Paris between the Head of Government Antoni Mart and the French President and Prince of Andorra Franois Hollande. Hollande welcomed the move as part of a process of Andorra "bringing its taxation in line with international standards".
By the mid2010s, the financial system comprised five banking groups, one specialised credit entity, eight investment undertaking management entities, three asset management companies, and 29 insurance companies, 14 of which are branches of foreign insurance companies authorised to operate in the principality.
Demographics
Population
The population of Andorra is estimated at . The Andorrans are a Romance ethnic group of originally Catalan descent. The population has grown from 5,000 in 1900.
Twothirds of residents lack Andorran nationality and do not have the right to vote in communal elections. Moreover, they are not allowed to be elected as prime minister or to own more than 33 of the capital stock of a privately held company.
Languages
The historic and official la |
nguage is Catalan, a Romance language. The Andorran government encourages the use of Catalan. It funds a Commission for Catalan Toponymy in Andorra Catalan , and provides free Catalan classes to assist immigrants. Andorran television and radio stations use Catalan.
Because of immigration, historical links, and close geographic proximity, Spanish, Portuguese and French are commonly spoken. Most Andorran residents can speak one or more of these, in addition to Catalan. English is less commonly spoken among the general population, though it is understood to varying degrees in the major tourist resorts. Andorra is one of only four European countries together with France, Monaco, and Turkey that have never signed the Council of Europe Framework Convention on National Minorities.
According to mother tongue percentage statistics by the Andorran Government released in 2018 the principality has the following
Religion
The population of Andorra is predominantly 88.2 Catholic. Their patron saint is Our Lady of Meritxe |
ll. There are also members of various Protestant denominations. There are also small numbers of Muslims, Hindus, and Bah's, and roughly 100 Jews. See History of the Jews in Andorra.
Largest cities
Education
Schools
Children between the ages of 6 and 16 are required by law to have fulltime education. Education up to secondary level is provided free of charge by the government.
There are three systems of school, Andorran, French and Spanish, which use Catalan, French and Spanish languages respectively, as the main language of instruction. Parents may choose which system their children attend. All schools are built and maintained by Andorran authorities, but teachers in the French and Spanish schools are paid for the most part by France and Spain. 39 of Andorran children attend Andorran schools, 33 attend French schools, and 28 Spanish schools.
University of Andorra
The Universitat d'Andorra UdA is the state public university and is the only university in Andorra. It was established in 1997. The university |
provides firstlevel degrees in nursing, computer science, business administration, and educational sciences, in addition to higher professional education courses. The only two graduate schools in Andorra are the Nursing School and the School of Computer Science, the latter having a PhD programme.
Virtual Studies Centre
The geographical complexity of the country as well as the small number of students prevents the University of Andorra from developing a full academic programme, and it serves principally as a centre for virtual studies, connected to Spanish and French universities. The Virtual Studies Centre Centre d'Estudis Virtuals at the university runs approximately 20 different academic degrees at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in fields including tourism, law, Catalan philology, humanities, psychology, political sciences, audiovisual communication, telecommunications engineering, and East Asia studies. The centre also runs various postgraduate programmes and continuingeducation courses for pr |
ofessionals.
Transport
Until the 20th century, Andorra had very limited transport links to the outside world, and development of the country was affected by its physical isolation. Even now, the nearest major airports at Toulouse and Barcelona are both three hours' drive from Andorra.
Andorra has a road network of , of which is unpaved. The two main roads out of Andorra la Vella are the CG1 to the Spanish border near Sant Juli de Lria, and the CG2 to the French border via the Envalira Tunnel near El Pas de la Casa. Bus services cover all metropolitan areas and many rural communities, with services on most major routes running halfhourly or more frequently during peak travel times. There are frequent longdistance bus services from Andorra to Barcelona and Toulouse, plus a daily tour from the former city. Bus services mostly are run by private companies, but some local ones are operated by the government.
There are no airports for fixedwing aircraft within Andorra's borders but there are, however, heliport |
s in La Massana Cam Heliport, Arinsal and EscaldesEngordany with commercial helicopter services and an airport located in the neighbouring Spanish comarca of Alt Urgell, south of the AndorranSpanish border. Since July 2015, AndorraLa Seu d'Urgell Airport has operated commercial flights to Madrid and Palma de Mallorca, and is the main hub for Air Andorra and Andorra Airlines. As of 11 July 2018, there are no regular commercial flights at the airport.
Nearby airports located in Spain and France provide access to international flights for the principality. The nearest airports are at Perpignan, France from Andorra and Lleida, Spain from Andorra. The largest nearby airports are at Toulouse, France from Andorra and Barcelona, Spain from Andorra. There are hourly bus services from both Barcelona and Toulouse airports to Andorra.
The nearest railway station is AndorreL'Hospitalet station east of Andorra which is on the gauge line from LatourdeCarol southeast of Andorra, to Toulouse and on to Paris by the Fr |
ench highspeed trains. This line is operated by the SNCF. LatourdeCarol has a scenic trainline to VillefranchedeConflent, as well as the SNCF's gauge line connecting to Perpignan, and the Renfe's gauge line to Barcelona. There are also direct Intercits de Nuit trains between L'Hospitaletprsl'Andorre and Paris on certain dates.
Media and telecommunications
In Andorra, mobile and fixed telephone and internet services are operated exclusively by the Andorran national telecommunications company, Andorra Telecom. The same company also manages the technical infrastructure for national broadcasting of digital television and radio. In 2010, Andorra became the first country to provide a direct optical fiber link to all homes FTTH and businesses.
The first commercial radio station to broadcast was Radio Andorra, which was active from 1939 to 1981. On 12 October 1989, the General Council established radio and television as essential public services creating and managing the entity ORTA, becoming on 13 April 2000, |
in the public company Rdio i Televisi d'Andorra RTVA. In 1990, the public radio was founded on the Radio Nacional d'Andorra. As an autochthonous television channel, there is only the national public television network Andorra Televisi, created in 1995. Additional TV and radio stations from Spain and France are available via digital terrestrial television and IPTV.
There are three national newspapers, Diari d'Andorra, El Peridic d'Andorra, and Bondia as well as several local newspapers. The history of the Andorran press begins in the period between 1917 and 1937 with the appearance of several periodicals papers such as Les Valls d'Andorra 1917, Nova Andorra 1932 and Andorra Agrcola 1933. In 1974, the Poble Andorr became the first regular newspaper in Andorra. There is also an amateur radio society and news agency ANA with independent management.
Culture
Andorra is home to folk dances like the contraps and marratxa, which survive in Sant Juli de Lria especially. Andorran folk music has similarities to the mu |
sic of its neighbours, but is especially Catalan in character, especially in the presence of dances such as the sardana. Other Andorran folk dances include contraps in Andorra la Vella and Saint Anne's dance in EscaldesEngordany. Andorra's national holiday is Our Lady of Meritxell Day, 8 September.
Among the more important festivals and traditions are the Canlich Gathering in May, the Roser d'Ordino in July, the Meritxell Day National Day of Andorra, the Andorra la Vella Fair, the Sant Jordi Day, the Santa Llcia Fair, the Festivity from La Candelera to Canillo, the Carnival of Encamp, the sung of caramelles, the Festivity of Sant Esteve and the Festa del Poble.
Andorra participated regularly in the Eurovision Song Contest between 2004 and 2009, being the only participating country presenting songs in Catalan.
In popular folklore, the bestknown Andorran legends are the legend of Charlemagne, according to which this Frankish King would have founded the country, the White Lady of Auviny, the Buner d'Ordino, t |
he legend of Engolasters Lake and the legend of Our Lady of Meritxell.
Andorran gastronomy is mainly Catalan, although it has also adopted other elements of French and Italian cuisines. The cuisine of the country has similar characteristics with the neighbours of the Cerdanya and the Alt Urgell, with whom it has a strong cultural ties. Andorra's cuisine is marked by its nature as mountain valleys. Typical dishes of the country are the quince allioli, the duck with winter pear, the lamb in the oven with nuts, pork civet, the massegada cake, the escarole with pear trees, duck confit and mushrooms, escudella, spinach with raisins and pine nuts, jelly marmalade, stuffed murgues mushrooms with pork, dandelion salad and the Andorran trout of river. To drink, the mulled wine and beer are also popular. Some of the dishes are very common in the mountainous regions of Catalonia, such as trinxat, embotits, cooked snails, rice with mushrooms, mountain rice and mat.
PreRomanesque and Romanesque art are one of the most i |
mportant artistic manifestations and characteristics of the Principality. The Romanesque one allows to know the formation of the parochial communities, the relations of social and political power and the national culture. There are a total of forty Romanesque churches that stand out as being small austere ornamentation constructions, as well as bridges, fortresses and manor houses of the same period.
Summer solstice fire festivals in the Pyrenees was included as UNESCO Intangible cultural heritage in 2015. Also the MadriuPerafitaClaror Valley became Andorra's first, and to date its only, UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004, with a small extension in 2006.
Sports
Andorra is famous for the practice of winter sports. Andorra has the largest territory of ski slopes in the Pyrenees 3100 hectares and about 350 km of slopes and two ski resorts. Grandvalira is the largest and most popular resort. Other popular sports played in Andorra include football, rugby union, basketball, and roller hockey.
For roller hockey, |
Andorra usually plays in CERH Euro Cup and in FIRS Roller Hockey World Cup. In 2011, Andorra was the host country to the 2011 European League Final Eight.
The country is represented in association football by the Andorra national football team. The team gained its first competitive win in a European Championship qualifier on 11 October 2019, against Moldova. Football is governed in Andorra by the Andorran Football Federation founded in 1994, it organizes the national competitions of association football Primera Divisi, Copa Constituci and Supercopa and futsal. Andorra was admitted to UEFA and FIFA in the same year, 1996. FC Andorra, a club based in Andorra la Vella founded in 1942, compete in the Spanish football league system.
Rugby is a traditional sport in Andorra, mainly influenced by the popularity in southern France. The Andorra national rugby union team, nicknamed Els Isards, plays on the international stage in rugby union and rugby sevens. VPC Andorra XV is a rugby team based in Andorra la Vella, w |
hich actually plays in the French championship.
Basketball popularity has increased in the country since the 1990s, when the Andorran team BC Andorra played in the top league of Spain Liga ACB. After 18 years the club returned to the top league in 2014.
Other sports practised in Andorra include cycling, volleyball, judo, Australian Rules football, handball, swimming, gymnastics, tennis, and motorsports. In 2012, Andorra raised its first national cricket team and played a home match against the Dutch Fellowship of Fairly Odd Places Cricket Club, the first match played in the history of Andorra at an altitude of .
Andorra first participated at the Olympic Games in 1976. The country has appeared in every Winter Olympic Games since 1976. Andorra competes in the Games of the Small States of Europe, being twice the host country, in 1991 and 2005.
As one of the Catalan Countries, Andorra is home to a team of castellers, or Catalan human tower builders. The , based in the town of Santa Coloma d'Andorra, are recog |
nized by the , the governing body of castells.
See also
Index of Andorrarelated articles
Outline of Andorra
Bibliography of Andorra
Explanatory notes
Citations
General bibliography
Further reading
Berthet, Elie, The Valley of Andorra. Bristol, UK J. W. Arrowsmith, 1886.
Butler, Michael, Frisch Andorra.
Carrick, Noel, Let's Visit Andorra. London Macmillan, 1988.
Deane, Shirley, The Road to Andorra. London John Murray, 1960.
Duursma, John C., Fragmentation and the International Relations of MicroStates. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Jenner, Paul Christine Smith, Landscapes of the Pyrenees. London Sunflower Books, 1990.
Johnson, Virginia W., Two Quaint Republics Andorra and San Marino.
Leary, Lewis Gaston, Andorra the Hidden Republic. London T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
Mackintosh, May, Assignment in Andorra. London Pan, 1976.
Murray, James Erskine, A Summer in the Pyrenees. London John Macrone, 1837.
Newman, Bernard, Round About Andorra. London George Allen Unwin, 1928.
Piesold, Werner, A |
ndorra.
Reichert, Thomas, Andorra A Country Survey. Nuremberg, 1986.
Spender, Harold H. Llewellyn Smith, Through the High Pyrenees. London A. D. Innes, 1898.
Vila, Linda Armengol, Approach to the History of Andorra. Perpignan Institut d'Estudis Andorrans, 1989.
Vilajoana, Ricard Fiter M. Marti Rebols, All Andorra. Barcelona Escudo de Oro, 1979.
Waagenaar, Sam, The Little Five. London Andre Deutsch, 1960.
External links
Govern d'Andorra Official governmental site
Andorra. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
Portals to the World from the United States Library of Congress
Andorra from UCB Libraries GovPubs
Andorra from the BBC News
Andorra Gua, turismo y de viajes
History of Andorra Primary Documents from EuroDocs
A New Path for Andorra slideshow by The New York Times
1278 establishments in Europe
Catalan Countries
Christian states
Countries in Europe
Diarchies
Dutyfree zones of Europe
Frenchspeaking countries and territories
Iberian Peninsula
Important Bird Areas of And |
orra
Landlocked countries
Member states of the Council of Europe
Member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
Current member states of the United Nations
Monarchies of Europe
Princebishoprics
Principalities
Pyrenees
Southern European countries
Southwestern European countries
Spanishspeaking countries and territories
Special economic zones
States and territories established in 1278 |
In mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean or arithmetic average, or simply just the mean or the average when the context is clear, is the sum of a collection of numbers divided by the count of numbers in the collection. The collection is often a set of results of an experiment or an observational study, or frequently a set of results from a survey. The term "arithmetic mean" is preferred in some contexts in mathematics and statistics, because it helps distinguish it from other means, such as the geometric mean and the harmonic mean.
In addition to mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean is used frequently in many diverse fields such as economics, anthropology and history, and it is used in almost every academic field to some extent. For example, per capita income is the arithmetic average income of a nation's population.
While the arithmetic mean is often used to report central tendencies, it is not a robust statistic, meaning that it is greatly influenced by outliers values that are very |
much larger or smaller than most of the values. For skewed distributions, such as the distribution of income for which a few people's incomes are substantially greater than most people's, the arithmetic mean may not coincide with one's notion of "middle", and robust statistics, such as the median, may provide better description of central tendency.
Definition
Given a data set , the arithmetic mean or mean or average, denoted read bar, is the mean of the values .
The arithmetic mean is the most commonly used and readily understood measure of central tendency in a data set. In statistics, the term average refers to any of the measures of central tendency. The arithmetic mean of a set of observed data is defined as being equal to the sum of the numerical values of each and every observation, divided by the total number of observations. Symbolically, if we have a data set consisting of the values , then the arithmetic mean is defined by the formula
for an explanation of the summation operator, see summati |
on.
For example, consider the monthly salary of 10 employees of a firm 2500, 2700, 2400, 2300, 2550, 2650, 2750, 2450, 2600, 2400. The arithmetic mean is
If the data set is a statistical population i.e., consists of every possible observation and not just a subset of them, then the mean of that population is called the population mean, and denoted by the Greek letter . If the data set is a statistical sample a subset of the population, then we call the statistic resulting from this calculation a sample mean which for a data set is denoted as .
The arithmetic mean can be similarly defined for vectors in multiple dimension, not only scalar values; this is often referred to as a centroid. More generally, because the arithmetic mean is a convex combination coefficients sum to 1, it can be defined on a convex space, not only a vector space.
Motivating properties
The arithmetic mean has several properties that make it useful, especially as a measure of central tendency. These include
If numbers have mea |
n , then . Since is the distance from a given number to the mean, one way to interpret this property is as saying that the numbers to the left of the mean are balanced by the numbers to the right of the mean. The mean is the only single number for which the residuals deviations from the estimate sum to zero.
If it is required to use a single number as a "typical" value for a set of known numbers , then the arithmetic mean of the numbers does this best, in the sense of minimizing the sum of squared deviations from the typical value the sum of . It follows that the sample mean is also the best single predictor in the sense of having the lowest root mean squared error. If the arithmetic mean of a population of numbers is desired, then the estimate of it that is unbiased is the arithmetic mean of a sample drawn from the population.
Contrast with median
The arithmetic mean may be contrasted with the median. The median is defined such that no more than half the values are larger than, and no more than half are |
smaller than, the median. If elements in the data increase arithmetically, when placed in some order, then the median and arithmetic average are equal. For example, consider the data sample . The average is , as is the median. However, when we consider a sample that cannot be arranged so as to increase arithmetically, such as , the median and arithmetic average can differ significantly. In this case, the arithmetic average is 6.2, while the median is 4. In general, the average value can vary significantly from most values in the sample, and can be larger or smaller than most of them.
There are applications of this phenomenon in many fields. For example, since the 1980s, the median income in the United States has increased more slowly than the arithmetic average of income.
Generalizations
Weighted average
A weighted average, or weighted mean, is an average in which some data points count more heavily than others, in that they are given more weight in the calculation. For example, the arithmetic mean of an |
d is , or equivalently . In contrast, a weighted mean in which the first number receives, for example, twice as much weight as the second perhaps because it is assumed to appear twice as often in the general population from which these numbers were sampled would be calculated as . Here the weights, which necessarily sum to the value one, are and , the former being twice the latter. The arithmetic mean sometimes called the "unweighted average" or "equally weighted average" can be interpreted as a special case of a weighted average in which all the weights are equal to each other equal to in the above example, and equal to in a situation with numbers being averaged.
Continuous probability distributions
If a numerical property, and any sample of data from it, could take on any value from a continuous range, instead of, for example, just integers, then the probability of a number falling into some range of possible values can be described by integrating a continuous probability distribution across this ran |
ge, even when the naive probability for a sample number taking one certain value from infinitely many is zero. The analog of a weighted average in this context, in which there are an infinite number of possibilities for the precise value of the variable in each range, is called the mean of the probability distribution. A most widely encountered probability distribution is called the normal distribution; it has the property that all measures of its central tendency, including not just the mean but also the aforementioned median and the mode the three M's, are equal to each other. This equality does not hold for other probability distributions, as illustrated for the lognormal distribution here.
Angles
Particular care must be taken when using cyclic data, such as phases or angles. Naively taking the arithmetic mean of 1 and 359 yields a result of 180.
This is incorrect for two reasons
Firstly, angle measurements are only defined up to an additive constant of 360 or 2, if measuring in radians. Thus one could |
as easily call these 1 and 1, or 361 and 719, since each one of them gives a different average.
Secondly, in this situation, 0 equivalently, 360 is geometrically a better average value there is lower dispersion about it the points are both 1 from it, and 179 from 180, the putative average.
In general application, such an oversight will lead to the average value artificially moving towards the middle of the numerical range. A solution to this problem is to use the optimization formulation viz., define the mean as the central point the point about which one has the lowest dispersion, and redefine the difference as a modular distance i.e., the distance on the circle so the modular distance between 1 and 359 is 2, not 358.
Symbols and encoding
The arithmetic mean is often denoted by a bar, a.k.a vinculum or macron, for example as in read bar.
Some software text processors, web browsers may not display the x symbol properly. For example, the x symbol in HTML is actually a combination of two codes the base |
letter x plus a code for the line above 772; or .
In some texts, such as pdfs, the x symbol may be replaced by a cent symbol Unicode 162, when copied to text processor such as Microsoft Word.
See also
Frchet mean
Generalized mean
Geometric mean
Harmonic mean
Inequality of arithmetic and geometric means
Mode
Sample mean and covariance
Standard deviation
Standard error of the mean
Summary statistics
References
Further reading
External links
Calculations and comparisons between arithmetic mean and geometric mean of two numbers
Calculate the arithmetic mean of a series of numbers on fxSolver
Means |
The American Football Conference AFC is one of the two conferences of the National Football League NFL, the highest professional level of American football in the United States. This conference currently contains 16 teams organized into 4 divisions, as does its counterpart, the National Football Conference NFC. Both conferences were created as part of the 1970 merger between the National Football League, and the American Football League AFL. All ten of the AFL teams, and three NFL teams, became members of the new AFC, with the remaining thirteen NFL teams forming the NFC. A series of league expansions and division realignments have occurred since the merger, thus making the current total of 16 teams in each conference. The current AFC champions are the Cincinnati Bengals, who defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2022 AFC Championship Game for their third conference championship, and their first since 1988.
Teams
Like the NFC, the conference has 16 teams organized into four divisions each with four teams Ea |
st, North, South and West.
Season structure
This chart of the 2021 season standings displays an application of the NFL scheduling formula. The Bengals in 2021 highlighted in green finished in first place in the AFC North. Thus, in 2021, the Bengals are scheduled to play two games against each of its division rivals highlighted in light blue, one game against each team in the AFC East and NFC South highlighted in yellow, and one game each against the firstplace finishers in the AFC South, AFC West highlighted in orange, and NFC East highlighted in pink.
Currently, the fourteen opponents each team faces over the 17game regular season schedule are set using a predetermined formula
Each AFC team plays the other teams in their respective division twice home and away during the regular season, in addition to eleven other games assigned to their schedule by the NFL three games are assigned on the basis of a particular team's final divisional standing from the previous season, and the remaining eight games are spl |
it between the roster of two other NFL divisions. This assignment shifts each year and will follow a standard cycle. Using the 2021 regular season schedule as an example, each team in the AFC West plays against every team in the AFC North and NFC East. In this way, nondivisional competition will be mostly among common opponents the exception being the three games assigned based on the team's priorseason divisional standing.
At the end of each season, the four division winners and three wild cards nondivision winners with best regular season record in the AFC qualify for the playoffs. The AFC playoffs culminate in the AFC Championship Game, with the winner receiving the Lamar Hunt Trophy. The AFC champion then plays the NFC champion in the Super Bowl.
History
Both the AFC and the NFC were created after the NFL merged with the American Football League AFL in 1970. The AFL began play in 1960 with eight teams, and added two more expansion clubs the Miami Dolphins in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 bef |
ore the merger. In order to equalize the number of teams in each conference, three NFL teams that predated the AFL's launch the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the thenBaltimore Colts joined the ten former AFL teams to form the AFC. The two AFL divisions AFL East and AFL West were more or less intact, while the NFL's Century Division, in which the Browns and the Steelers had played since 1967, was moved from the NFL to become the new AFC Central. Upon the completion of the merger of the AFL and NFL in 1970, the newly minted American Football Conference had already agreed upon their divisional setup along mostly geographical lines for the 1970 season; the National Football Conference, however, could not agree upon their setup, and one was chosen from a fishbowl on January 16, 1970.
Since the merger, five expansion teams have joined the AFC and two have left, thus making the current total 16. When the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the league in 1976, they were temporarily plac |
ed in the NFC and AFC respectively. This arrangement lasted for one season only before the two teams switched conferences. The Seahawks eventually returned to the NFC as a result of the 2002 realignment. The expansion Jacksonville Jaguars joined the AFC in 1995. There have been five teams that have relocated at least once. In 1984, the Baltimore Colts relocated to Indianapolis. In 1995, the Cleveland Browns had attempted to move to Baltimore; the resulting dispute between Cleveland and the team led to Modell establishing the Baltimore Ravens with the players and personnel from the Browns, while the Browns were placed in suspended operations before they were reinstated by the NFL. The Ravens were treated as an expansion team.
In California, the Oakland Raiders relocated to Los Angeles in 1982, back to Oakland in 1995, and then to Las Vegas in 2020, while the San Diego Chargers returned to Los Angeles in 2017 after 56 years in San Diego.
The Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee in 1997, where they were renamed t |
he Tennessee Oilers. The team would change its name again, two years later, to the Tennessee Titans.
The NFL would again expand in 2002, adding the Houston Texans to the AFC. With the exception of the aforementioned relocations since that time, the divisional setup has remained static ever since.
Between 1995 and 2021, the AFC has sent only 9 of its 16 teams to the Super Bowl New England Patriots 10 times, Denver Broncos 4 times, Pittsburgh Steelers 4 times, Baltimore Ravens 2 times, Indianapolis Colts 2 times, Kansas City Chiefs 2 times, Cincinnati Bengals 1 time, Las Vegas Raiders 1 time, Tennessee Titans 1 time. By contrast, the NFC has sent 13 of the 16 NFC teams during that same time frame with only the Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings, and Washington Commanders missing out on an appearance in the Super Bowl. 17 of the 19 AFC champions from 2001 to 2019 have started one of just three quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger in the Super Bowl. The AFC has started 7 quarterbacks in |
the last 20 Super Bowls, while the NFC has started 16.
Logo
The merged league created a new logo for the AFC that took elements of the old AFL logo, specifically the "A" and the six stars surrounding it. The AFC logo basically remained unchanged from 1970 to 2009. The 2010 NFL season introduced an updated AFC logo, with the most notable revision being the removal of two stars leaving four representing the four divisions of the AFC, and moving the stars inside the letter, similar to the NFC logo.
Television
NBC aired the AFC's Sunday afternoon and playoff games from 1970 through the 1997 season. From 1998 to 2013, CBS was the primary broadcast rightsholder to the AFC; in those years, all interconference games in which the AFC team was the visiting team were broadcast on either NBC or CBS. Since 2014, the crossflex policy allows select AFC games that involve them playing an NFC team at home or intraconference games to be moved from CBS to Fox. Since 1990, select AFC playoff games have been seen on ABC or ES |
PN.
References
National Football League
Conference
Sports organizations established in 1970 |
Animal Farm is a satirical allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.
According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscowdirected Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the May Days conflicts between the POUM and Stalinist forces during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin "", and in his essay "Why I Write" 1946, wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, |
with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".
The original title was Animal Farm A Fairy Story, but U.S. publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, and only one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime, the Telugu version, kept it. Other titular variations include subtitles like "A Satire" and "A Contemporary Satire". Orwell suggested the title for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for "bear", a symbol of Russia. It also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, .
Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the United Kingdom was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and the British intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated. The manuscript was initially rejected by a number of British and American publishers, including one of Orwell's own, Victor Gollancz, which delayed its publication. It became a gre |
at commercial success when it did appear partly because international relations were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War.
Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best Englishlanguage novels 1923 to 2005; it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20thCentury Novels, and number 46 on the BBC's The Big Read poll. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.
Plot summary
The poorlyrun Manor Farm near Willingdon, England, is ripened for rebellion from its animal populace by neglect at the hands of the irresponsible and alcoholic farmer, Mr. Jones. One night, the exalted boar, Old Major, holds a conference, at which he calls for the overthrow of humans and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called "Beasts of England". When Old Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and stage a revolt, driving Mr. Jones off the farm and renaming the property "Animal Farm". They ado |
pt the Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal". The decree is painted in large letters on one side of the barn. Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism. To commemorate the start of Animal Farm, Snowball raises a green flag with a white hoof and horn. Food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their personal health. Following an unsuccessful attempt by Mr. Jones and his associates to retake the farm later dubbed the "Battle of the Cowshed", Snowball announces his plans to modernise the farm by building a windmill. Napoleon disputes this idea, and matters come to head, which culminate in Napoleon's dogs chasing Snowball away and Napoleon declaring himself supreme commander.
Napoleon enacts changes to the governance structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs |
who will run the farm. Through a young porker named Squealer, Napoleon claims credit for the windmill idea, claiming that Snowball was only trying to win animals to his side. The animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. When the animals find the windmill collapsed after a violent storm, Napoleon and Squealer persuade the animals that Snowball is trying to sabotage their project, and begin to purge the farm of animals accused by Napoleon of consorting with his old rival. When some animals recall the Battle of the Cowshed, Napoleon who was nowhere to be found during the battle gradually smears Snowball to the point of saying he is a collaborator of Mr. Jones, even dismissing the fact that Snowball was given an award of courage while falsely representing himself as the main hero of the battle. "Beasts of England" is replaced with "Animal Farm", while an anthem glorifying Napoleon, who appears to be adopting the lifestyle of a man "Comrade Napoleon", is composed and sung. Napoleon |
then conducts a second purge, during which many animals who are alleged to be helping Snowball in plots are executed by Napoleon's dogs, which troubles the rest of the animals. Despite their hardships, the animals are easily placated by Napoleon's retort that they are better off than they were under Mr. Jones, as well as by the sheep's continual bleating of four legs good, two legs bad.
Mr. Frederick, a neighbouring farmer, attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the restored windmill. Although the animals win the battle, they do so at great cost, as many, including Boxer the workhorse, are wounded. Although he recovers from this, Boxer eventually collapses while working on the windmill being almost 12 years old at that point. He is taken away in a knacker's van, and a donkey called Benjamin alerts the animals of this, but Squealer quickly waves off their alarm by persuading the animals that the van had been purchased from the knacker by an animal hospital and that the previous owner's signboard h |
ad not been repainted. Squealer subsequently reports Boxer's death and honours him with a festival the following day. However, Napoleon had in fact engineered the sale of Boxer to the knacker, allowing him and his inner circle to acquire money to buy whisky for themselves.
Years pass, the windmill is rebuilt, and another windmill is constructed, which makes the farm a good amount of income. However, the ideals that Snowball discussed, including stalls with electric lighting, heating, and running water, are forgotten, with Napoleon advocating that the happiest animals live simple lives. Snowball has been forgotten, alongside Boxer, with "the exception of the few who knew him". Many of the animals who participated in the rebellion are dead or old. Mr. Jones is also dead, saying he "died in an inebriates' home in another part of the country". The pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, drink alcohol, and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments are abridged to just one phrase "All animals |
are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The maxim "Four legs good, two legs bad" is similarly changed to "Four legs good, two legs better." Other changes include the Hoof and Horn flag being replaced with a plain green banner and Old Major's skull, which was previously put on display, being reburied.
Napoleon holds a dinner party for the pigs and local farmers, with whom he celebrates a new alliance. He abolishes the practice of the revolutionary traditions and restores the name "The Manor Farm". The men and pigs start playing cards, flattering and praising each other while cheating at the game. Both Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington, one of the farmers, play the Ace of Spades at the same time and both sides begin fighting loudly over who cheated first. When the animals outside look at the pigs and men, they can no longer distinguish between the two.
Characters
Pigs
Old Major An aged prize Middle White boar provides the inspiration that fuels the rebellion. He is also called Willingdon Beauty |
when showing. He is an allegorical combination of Karl Marx, one of the creators of communism, and Vladimir Lenin, the communist leader of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet nation, in that he draws up the principles of the revolution. His skull being put on revered public display recalls Lenin, whose embalmed body was left in indefinite repose. By the end of the book, the skull is reburied.
Napoleon "A large, rather fiercelooking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way". An allegory of Joseph Stalin, Napoleon is the leader of Animal Farm.
Snowball Napoleon's rival and original head of the farm after Jones' overthrow. His life parallels that of Leon Trotsky, but may also combine elements from Lenin.
Squealer A small, white, fat porker who serves as Napoleon's secondincommand and minister of propaganda, holding a position similar to that of Vyacheslav Molotov.
Minimus A poetic pig who writes the second and third nat |
ional anthems of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned. Literary theorist John Rodden compares him to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
The piglets Hinted to be the children of Napoleon and are the first generation of animals subjugated to his idea of animal inequality.
The young pigs Four pigs who complain about Napoleon's takeover of the farm but are quickly silenced and later executed, the first animals killed in Napoleon's farm purge. Probably based on the Great Purge of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Alexei Rykov.
Pinkeye A minor pig who is mentioned only once; he is the taste tester that samples Napoleon's food to make sure it is not poisoned, in response to rumours about an assassination attempt on Napoleon.
Humans
Mr. Jones A heavy drinker who is the original owner of Manor Farm, a farm in disrepair with farmhands who often loaf on the job. He is an allegory of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 and was |
murdered, along with the rest of his family, by the Bolsheviks on 17 July 1918. The animals revolt after Jones goes on a drinking binge, returns hungover the following day and neglects them completely. Jones is married, but his wife plays no active role in the book. She seems to live with her husband's drunkenness, going to bed while he stays up drinking till late into the night. In her only other appearance, she hastily throws a few things into a travel bag and flees when she sees that the animals are revolting. Towards the end of the book, one of the farm sows wears her old Sunday dress.
Mr. Frederick The tough owner of Pinchfield Farm, a small but wellkept neighbouring farm, who briefly enters into an alliance with Napoleon. Animal Farm shares land boundaries with Pinchfield on one side and Foxwood on another, making Animal Farm a "buffer zone" between the two bickering farmers. The animals of Animal Farm are terrified of Frederick, as rumours abound of him abusing his animals and entertaining himsel |
f with cockfighting. Napoleon enters into an alliance with Frederick in order to sell surplus timber that Pilkington also sought, but is enraged to learn Frederick paid him in counterfeit money. Shortly after the swindling, Frederick and his men invade Animal Farm, killing many animals and destroying the windmill. The brief alliance and subsequent invasion may allude to the MolotovRibbentrop Pact and Operation Barbarossa.
Mr. Pilkington The easygoing but crafty and welltodo owner of Foxwood Farm, a large neighbouring farm overgrown with weeds. Pilkington is wealthier than Frederick and owns more land, but his farm is in need of care as opposed to Frederick's smaller but more efficiently run farm. Although on bad terms with Frederick, Pilkington is also concerned about the animal revolution that deposed Jones and worried that this could also happen to him.
Mr. Whymper A man hired by Napoleon to act as the liaison between Animal Farm and human society. At first, he is used to acquire necessities that cannot |
be produced on the farm, such as dog biscuits and paraffin wax, but later he procures luxuries like alcohol for the pigs.
Equines
Boxer A loyal, kind, dedicated, extremely strong, hardworking, and respectable carthorse, although quite naive and gullible. Boxer does a large share of the physical labour on the farm. He is shown to hold the belief that "Napoleon is always right." At one point, he had challenged Squealer's statement that Snowball was always against the welfare of the farm, earning him an attack from Napoleon's dogs. But Boxer's immense strength repels the attack, worrying the pigs that their authority can be challenged. Boxer has been compared to Alexey Stakhanov, a diligent and enthusiastic role model of the Stakhanovite movement. He has been described as "faithful and strong"; he believes any problem can be solved if he works harder. When Boxer is injured, Napoleon sells him to a local knacker to buy himself whisky, and Squealer gives a moving account, falsifying Boxer's death.
Mollie A s |
elfcentred, selfindulgent, and vain young white mare who quickly leaves for another farm after the revolution, in a manner similar to those who left Russia after the fall of the Tsar. She is only once mentioned again.
Clover A gentle, caring mare, who shows concern especially for Boxer, who often pushes himself too hard. Clover can read all the letters of the alphabet, but cannot "put words together". She seems to catch on to the sly tricks and schemes set up by Napoleon and Squealer.
Benjamin A donkey, one of the oldest, wisest animals on the farm, and one of the few who can read properly. He is sceptical, temperamental and cynical his most frequent remark is, "Life will go on as it has always gone on that is, badly." The academic Morris Dickstein has suggested there is "a touch of Orwell himself in this creature's timeless scepticism" and indeed, friends called Orwell "Donkey George", "after his grumbling donkey Benjamin, in Animal Farm."
Other animals
Muriel A wise old goat who is friends with all |
of the animals on the farm. Similarly to Benjamin, Muriel is one of the few animals on the farm who is not a pig but can read.
The puppies Offspring of Jessie and Bluebell, the puppies were taken away at birth by Napoleon and raised by him to serve as his powerful security force.
Moses The Raven, "Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a talebearer, but he was also a clever talker." Initially following Mrs. Jones into exile, he reappears several years later and resumes his role of talking but not working. He regales Animal Farm's denizens with tales of a wondrous place beyond the clouds called "Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest forever from our labours!" Orwell portrays established religion as "the black raven of priestcraft promising pie in the sky when you die, and faithfully serving whoever happens to be in power." His preaching to the animals heartens them, and Napoleon allows Moses to reside at the farm "with an allowance of a gill of beer daily", akin to how |
Stalin brought back the Russian Orthodox Church during the Second World War.
The sheep They are not given individual names or personalities. They show limited understanding of Animalism and the political atmosphere of the farm, yet nonetheless they are the voice of blind conformity as they bleat their support of Napoleon's ideals with jingles during his speeches and meetings with Snowball. Their constant bleating of "four legs good, two legs bad" was used as a device to drown out any opposition or alternative views from Snowball, much as Stalin used hysterical crowds to drown out Trotsky. Towards the end of the book, Squealer the propagandist trains the sheep to alter their slogan to "four legs good, two legs better", which they dutifully do.
The hens Also unnamed, the hens are promised at the start of the revolution that they will get to keep their eggs, which are stolen from them under Mr. Jones. However, their eggs are soon taken from them under the premise of buying goods from outside Animal Farm. T |
he hens are among the first to rebel, albeit unsuccessfully, against Napoleon.
The cows Also unnamed, the cows are enticed into the revolution by promises that their milk will not be stolen but can be used to raise their own calves. Their milk is then stolen by the pigs, who learn to milk them. The milk is stirred into the pigs' mash every day, while the other animals are denied such luxuries.
The cat Unnamed and never seen to carry out any work, the cat is absent for long periods and is forgiven because her excuses are so convincing and she "purred so affectionately that it was impossible not to believe in her good intentions." She has no interest in the politics of the farm, and the only time she is recorded as having participated in an election, she is found to have actually "voted on both sides."
The ducks Also unnamed.
The roosters One arranges to wake Boxer early, and a black one acts as a trumpeter for Napoleon.
The geese Also unnamed. One gander commits suicide by eating nightshade berries. |
Genre and style
George Orwell's Animal Farm is an example of a political satire that was intended to have a "wider application", according to Orwell himself, in terms of its relevance. Stylistically, the work shares many similarities with some of Orwell's other works, most notably 1984, as both have been considered works of Swiftian Satire. Furthermore, these two prominent works seem to suggest Orwell's bleak view of the future for humanity; he seems to stress the potentialcurrent threat of dystopias similar to those in Animal Farm and 1984. In these kinds of works, Orwell distinctly references the disarray and traumatic conditions of Europe following the Second World War. Orwell's style and writing philosophy as a whole were very concerned with the pursuit of truth in writing. Orwell was committed to communicating in a way that was straightforward, given the way that he felt words were commonly used in politics to deceive and confuse. For this reason, he is careful, in Animal Farm, to make sure the narrat |
or speaks in an unbiased and uncomplicated fashion. The difference is seen in the way that the animals speak and interact, as the generally moral animals seem to speak their minds clearly, while the wicked animals on the farm, such as Napoleon, twist language in such a way that it meets their own insidious desires. This style reflects Orwell's close proximation to the issues facing Europe at the time and his determination to comment critically on Stalin's Soviet Russia.
Background
Origin and writing
George Orwell wrote the manuscript between November 1943 and February 1944 after his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which he described in Homage to Catalonia 1938. In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries." This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original |
socialist ideals. Homage to Catalonia sold poorly; after seeing Arthur Koestler's bestselling, Darkness at Noon, about the Moscow Trials, Orwell decided that fiction was the best way to describe totalitarianism.
Immediately prior to writing the book, Orwell had quit the BBC. He was also upset about a booklet for propagandists the Ministry of Information had put out. The booklet included instructions on how to quell ideological fears of the Soviet Union, such as directions to claim that the Red Terror was a figment of Nazi imagination.
In the preface, Orwell described the source of the idea of setting the book on a farm
In 1944, the manuscript was almost lost when a German V1 flying bomb destroyed his London home. Orwell spent hours sifting through the rubble to find the pages intact.
Publication
Publishing
Orwell initially encountered difficulty getting the manuscript published, largely due to fears that the book might upset the alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Four pub |
lishers refused to publish Animal Farm, yet one had initially accepted the work, but declined it after consulting the Ministry of Information. Eventually, Secker and Warburg published the first edition in 1945.
During the Second World War, it became clear to Orwell that antiSoviet literature was not something which most major publishing houses would touch including his regular publisher Gollancz. He also submitted the manuscript to Faber and Faber, where the poet T. S. Eliot who was a director of the firm rejected it; Eliot wrote back to Orwell praising the book's "good writing" and "fundamental integrity", but declared that they would only accept it for publication if they had some sympathy for the viewpoint "which I take to be generally Trotskyite". Eliot said he found the view "not convincing", and contended that the pigs were made out to be the best to run the farm; he posited that someone might argue "what was needed ... was not more communism but more publicspirited pigs". Orwell let Andr Deutsch, who |
was working for Nicholson Watson in 1944, read the typescript, and Deutsch was convinced that Nicholson Watson would want to publish it; however, they did not, and "lectured Orwell on what they perceived to be errors in Animal Farm." In his London Letter on 17 April 1944 for Partisan Review, Orwell wrote that it was "now next door to impossible to get anything overtly antiRussian printed. AntiRussian books do appear, but mostly from Catholic publishing firms and always from a religious or frankly reactionary angle."
The publisher Jonathan Cape, who had initially accepted Animal Farm, subsequently rejected the book after an official at the British Ministry of Information warned him off although the civil servant who it is assumed gave the order was later found to be a Soviet spy. Writing to Leonard Moore, a partner in the literary agency of Christy Moore, publisher Jonathan Cape explained that the decision had been taken on the advice of a senior official in the Ministry of Information. Such flagrant ant |
iSoviet bias was unacceptable, and the choice of pigs as the dominant class was thought to be especially offensive. It may reasonably be assumed that the "important official" was a man named Peter Smollett, who was later unmasked as a Soviet agent. Orwell was suspicious of SmollettSmolka, and he would be one of the names Orwell included in his list of CryptoCommunists and FellowTravellers sent to the Information Research Department in 1949. The publisher wrote to Orwell, saying
Frederic Warburg also faced pressures against publication, even from people in his own office and from his wife Pamela, who felt that it was not the moment for ingratitude towards Stalin and the heroic Red Army, which had played a major part in defeating Adolf Hitler. A Russian translation was printed in the paper Posev, and in giving permission for a Russian translation of Animal Farm, Orwell refused in advance all royalties. A translation in Ukrainian, which was produced in Germany, was confiscated in large part by the American war |
time authorities and handed over to the Soviet repatriation commission.
In October 1945, Orwell wrote to Frederic Warburg expressing interest in pursuing the possibility that the political cartoonist David Low might illustrate Animal Farm. Low had written a letter saying that he had had "a good time with Animal Farm an excellent bit of satire it would illustrate perfectly." Nothing came of this, and a trial issue produced by Secker Warburg in 1956 illustrated by John Driver was abandoned, but the Folio Society published an edition in 1984 illustrated by Quentin Blake and an edition illustrated by the cartoonist Ralph Steadman was published by Secker Warburg in 1995 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first edition of Animal Farm.
Preface
Orwell originally wrote a preface complaining about British selfcensorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally
Although the first edition allowed space for the preface, it was not included, and as of June |
2009 most editions of the book have not included it.
Secker and Warburg published the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945 without an introduction. However, the publisher had provided space for a preface in the author's proof composited from the manuscript. For reasons unknown, no preface was supplied, and the page numbers had to be renumbered at the last minute.
In 1972, Ian Angus found the original typescript titled "The Freedom of the Press", and Bernard Crick published it, together with his own introduction, in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972 as "How the essay came to be written". Orwell's essay criticised British selfcensorship by the press, specifically the suppression of unflattering descriptions of Stalin and the Soviet government. The same essay also appeared in the Italian 1976 edition of Animal Farm with another introduction by Crick, claiming to be the first edition with the preface. Other publishers were still declining to publish it.
Reception
Contemporary reviews of the w |
ork were not universally positive. Writing in the American New Republic magazine, George Soule expressed his disappointment in the book, writing that it "puzzled and saddened me. It seemed on the whole dull. The allegory turned out to be a creaking machine for saying in a clumsy way things that have been said better directly." Soule believed that the animals were not consistent enough with their realworld inspirations, and said, "It seems to me that the failure of this book commercially it is already assured of tremendous success arises from the fact that the satire deals not with something the author has experienced, but rather with stereotyped ideas about a country which he probably does not know very well".
The Guardian on 24 August 1945 called Animal Farm "a delightfully humorous and caustic satire on the rule of the many by the few". Tosco Fyvel, writing in Tribune on the same day, called the book "a gentle satire on a certain State and on the illusions of an age which may already be behind us." Julian |
Symons responded, on 7 September, "Should we not expect, in Tribune at least, acknowledgement of the fact that it is a satire not at all gentle upon a particular State Soviet Russia? It seems to me that a reviewer should have the courage to identify Napoleon with Stalin, and Snowball with Trotsky, and express an opinion favourable or unfavourable to the author, upon a political ground. In a hundred years time perhaps, Animal Farm may be simply a fairy story; today it is a political satire with a good deal of point." Animal Farm has been subject to much comment in the decades since these early remarks.
The CIA, from 1952 to 1957 in Operation Aedinosaur, sent millions of balloons carrying copies of the novel into Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, whose air forces tried to shoot the balloons down.
Time magazine chose Animal Farm as one of the 100 best Englishlanguage novels 1923 to 2005; it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20thCentury Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award i |
n 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.
Popular reading in schools, Animal Farm was ranked the UK's favourite book from school in a 2016 poll.
Animal Farm has also faced an array of challenges in school settings around the US. The following are examples of this controversy that has existed around Orwell's work
The John Birch Society in Wisconsin challenged the reading of Animal Farm in 1965 because of its reference to masses revolting.
New York State English Council's Committee on Defense Against Censorship found that in 1968, Animal Farm had been widely deemed a "problem book".
A censorship survey conducted in DeKalb County, Georgia, relating to the years 19791982, revealed that many schools had attempted to limit access to Animal Farm due to its "political theories".
A superintendent in Bay County, Florida, banned Animal Farm at the middle school and high school levels in 1987.
The Board quickly brought back the book, however, after receiving complaints of the ban a |
s "unconstitutional".
Animal Farm was removed from the Stonington, Connecticut school district curriculum in 2017.
Animal Farm has also faced similar forms of resistance in other countries. The ALA also mentions the way that the book was prevented from being featured at the International Book Fair in Moscow, Russia, in 1977 and banned from schools in the United Arab Emirates for references to practices or actions that defy Arab or Islamic beliefs, such as pigs or alcohol.
In the same manner, Animal Farm has also faced relatively recent issues in China. In 2018, the government made the decision to censor all online posts about or referring to Animal Farm. However the book itself, as of 2019, remains sold in stores. Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of The Atlantic stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in Mainland China for several reasons censors believe the general public is unlikely to read a highbrow book
, because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway, and |
because the Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated "It wasand remainsas easy to buy 1984 and Animal Farm in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles."
An enhanced version of the book, launched in India in 2017, was widely praised for capturing the author's intent, by republishing the proposed preface of the First Edition and the preface he wrote for the Ukrainian edition.
Analysis
Animalism
The pigs Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer adapt Old Major's ideas into "a complete system of thought", which they formally name Animalism, an allegoric reference to Communism, not to be confused with the philosophy Animalism. Soon after, Napoleon and Squealer partake in activities associated with the humans drinking alcohol, sleeping in beds, trading, which were explicitly prohibited by the Seven Commandments. Squealer is employed to alter the Seven Commandments to account for this humanisation, an allusion to the Soviet government's revis |
ing of history in order to exercise control of the people's beliefs about themselves and their society.
The original commandments are
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
These commandments are also distilled into the maxim "Four legs good, two legs bad!" which is primarily used by the sheep on the farm, often to disrupt discussions and disagreements between animals on the nature of Animalism.
Later, Napoleon and his pigs secretly revise some commandments to clear themselves of accusations of lawbreaking. The changed commandments are as follows, with the changes bolded
Eventually, these are replaced with the maxims, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", and "Four legs good, two legs better" as the pigs become more human. This is an ironic twist to the ori |
ginal purpose of the Seven Commandments, which were supposed to keep order within Animal Farm by uniting the animals together against the humans and preventing animals from following the humans' evil habits. Through the revision of the commandments, Orwell demonstrates how simply political dogma can be turned into malleable propaganda.
Significance and allegory
Orwell biographer Jeffrey Meyers has written, "virtually every detail has political significance in this allegory." Orwell himself wrote in 1946, "Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution ... and that kind of revolution violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously powerhungry people can only lead to a change of masters revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert." In a preface for a 1947 Ukrainian edition, he stated, "for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement. On my return fro |
m Spain in 1937 I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages."
The revolt of the animals against Farmer Jones is Orwell's analogy with the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Battle of the Cowshed has been said to represent the allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918, and the defeat of the White Russians in the Russian Civil War. The pigs' rise to preeminence mirrors the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, just as Napoleon's emergence as the farm's sole leader reflects Stalin's emergence. The pigs' appropriation of milk and apples for their own use, "the turning point of the story" as Orwell termed it in a letter to Dwight Macdonald, stands as an analogy for the crushing of the leftwing 1921 Kronstadt revolt against the Bolsheviks, and the difficult efforts of the animals to build the windmill suggest the various Five Year Plans. The puppies controlled by Napoleon parallel the nurture |
of the secret police in the Stalinist structure, and the pigs' treatment of the other animals on the farm recalls the internal terror faced by the populace in the 1930s. In chapter seven, when the animals confess their nonexistent crimes and are killed, Orwell directly alludes to the purges, confessions and show trials of the late 1930s. These contributed to Orwell's conviction that the Bolshevik revolution had been corrupted and the Soviet system become rotten.
Peter Edgerly Firchow and Peter Davison contend that the Battle of the Windmill, specifically referencing the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow, represents World War II. During the battle, Orwell first wrote, "All the animals, including Napoleon" took cover. Orwell had the publisher alter this to "All the animals except Napoleon" in recognition of Stalin's decision to remain in Moscow during the German advance. Orwell requested the change after he met Jzef Czapski in Paris in March 1945. Czapski, a survivor of the Katyn Massacre and an |
opponent of the Soviet regime, told Orwell, as Orwell wrote to Arthur Koestler, that it had been "the character and greatness of Stalin" that saved Russia from the German invasion.
Other connections that writers have suggested illustrate Orwell's telescoping of Russian history from 1917 to 1943 include the wave of rebelliousness that ran through the countryside after the Rebellion, which stands for the abortive revolutions in Hungary and in Germany Ch IV; the conflict between Napoleon and Snowball Ch V, parallelling "the two rival and quasiMessianic beliefs that seemed pitted against one another Trotskyism, with its faith in the revolutionary vocation of the proletariat of the West; and Stalinism with its glorification of Russia's socialist destiny"; Napoleon's dealings with Whymper and the Willingdon markets Ch VI, paralleling the Treaty of Rapallo; and Frederick's forged bank notes, parallelling the HitlerStalin pact of August 1939, after which Frederick attacks Animal Farm without warning and destroys the |
windmill.
The book's close, with the pigs and men in a kind of rapprochement, reflected Orwell's view of the 1943 Tehran Conference that seemed to display the establishment of "the best possible relations between the USSR and the West" but in reality were destined, as Orwell presciently predicted, to continue to unravel. The disagreement between the allies and the start of the Cold War is suggested when Napoleon and Pilkington, both suspicious, each "played an ace of spades simultaneously".
Similarly, the music in the novel, starting with "Beasts of England" and the later anthems, parallels "The Internationale" and its adoption and repudiation by the Soviet authorities as the anthem of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s.
Adaptations
Stage productions
In 2021, the National Youth Theatre toured a stage version of Animal Farm.
A solo version, adapted and performed by Guy Masterson, premired at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh in January 1995 and has toured worldwide since.
A theatrical version, with music by |
Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell, was staged at the National Theatre London on 25 April 1984, directed by Peter Hall. It toured nine cities in 1985.
A new adaptation written and directed by Robert Icke, designed by Bunny Christie with puppetry designed and directed by Toby Oli opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in January 2022 before touring the UK.
Films
Animal Farm has been adapted to film twice. Both differ from the novel and have been accused of taking significant liberties, including sanitising some aspects.
Animal Farm 1954 is an animated film, in which Napoleon is eventually overthrown in a second revolution. In 1974, E. Howard Hunt revealed that he had been sent by the CIA's Psychological Warfare department to obtain the film rights from Orwell's widow, and the resulting 1954 animation was funded by the agency.
Animal Farm 1999 is a liveaction TV version that shows Napoleon's regime collapsing in on itself, with the farm having new human owners, reflecting the collapse of Sovi |
et communism.
Andy Serkis is directing a film adaptation for Netflix, with Matt Reeves producing. Serkis began work on the film after finishing directing duties for Venom Let There Be Carnage.
Radio dramatisations
A BBC radio version, produced by Rayner Heppenstall, was broadcast in January 1947. Orwell listened to the production at his home in Canonbury Square, London, with Hugh Gordon Porteous, amongst others. Orwell later wrote to Heppenstall that Porteous, "who had not read the book, grasped what was happening after a few minutes."
A further radio production, again using Orwell's own dramatisation of the book, was broadcast in January 2013 on BBC Radio 4. Tamsin Greig narrated, and the cast included Nicky Henson as Napoleon, Toby Jones as the propagandist Squealer, and Ralph Ineson as Boxer.
Comic strip
In 1950, Norman Pett and his writing partner Don Freeman were secretly hired by the Information Research Department IRD, a secret wing of the British Foreign Office, to adapt Animal Farm into a comic |
strip. This comic was not published in the U.K. but ran in Brazilian and Burmese newspapers.
See also
Information Research Department
Authoritarian personality
History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union 19171927
History of the Soviet Union 19271953
Ideocracy
New class
Anthems in Animal Farm
Animals, an album based on Animal Farm
Books
Gulliver's Travels was a favourite book of Orwell's. Swift reverses the role of horses and human beings in the fourth book. Orwell brought to Animal Farm "a dose of Swiftian misanthropy, looking ahead to a time 'when the human race had finally been overthrown.'"
Bunt Revolt, published in 1924, is a book by Polish Nobel laureate Wadysaw Reymont with a theme similar to Animal Farms.
White Acre vs. Black Acre, published in 1856 and written by William M. Burwell, is a satirical novel that features allegories for slavery in the United States similar to Animal Farms portrayal of Soviet history.
George Orwell's own Nineteen EightyFour, a classic dystopian novel about t |
otalitarianism.
References
Explanatory notes
Citations
General sources
Further reading
O'Neill, Terry, Readings on Animal Farm 1998, Greenhaven Press. .
External links
Animal Farm Book Notes from Literapedia
Excerpts from Orwell's letters to his agent concerning Animal Farm
Literary Journal review
Orwell's original preface to the book
Animal Farm Revisited by John Molyneux, International Socialism, 44 1989
Animal Farm at the British Library
Animal Farm 1954
1945 British novels
Allegory
British novellas
British novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into plays
British novels adapted into television shows
British political novels
British satirical novels
Cats in literature
Cattle in literature
Censored books
Dogs in literature
Dystopian novels
English novels
Hugo Award for Best Novella winning works
Novels about animals
Novels about propaganda
Novels about revolutionaries
Novels about totalitarianism
Novels adapted into comics
Novels adapted into radio programs
Novels by Geor |
ge Orwell
Pigs in literature
Political literature
Roman clef novels
Satirical novels
Secker Warburg books |
Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult airbreathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations for many species around the gl |
obe.
The earliest amphibians "crown" evolved in the Carboniferous period from sarcopterygian fish with lungs and bonylimbed fins, features that were helpful in adapting to dry land. They diversified and became dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, but were later displaced by reptiles and other vertebrates. Over time, amphibians shrank in size and decreased in diversity, leaving only the modern subclass Lissamphibia.
The three modern orders of amphibians are Anura the frogs, Urodela the salamanders, and Apoda the caecilians. The number of known amphibian species is approximately 8,000, of which nearly 90 are frogs. The smallest amphibian and vertebrate in the world is a frog from New Guinea Paedophryne amauensis with a length of just . The largest living amphibian is the South China giant salamander Andrias sligoi, but this is dwarfed by the extinct Prionosuchus from the middle Permian of Brazil. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibian |
s is called herpetology.
Classification
The word amphibian is derived from the Ancient Greek term , which means 'both kinds of life', meaning 'of both kinds' and meaning 'life'. The term was initially used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters. Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates that are not amniotes. Amphibia in its widest sense was divided into three subclasses, two of which are extinct
Subclass Lepospondyli small Paleozoic group, which are more closely related to amniotes than Lissamphibia
Subclass Temnospondyli diverse Paleozoic and early Mesozoic grade
Subclass Lissamphibia all modern amphibians, including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts and caecilians
Salientia frogs, toads and relatives Jurassic to present7,360 current species in 53 families
Caudata salamanders, newts and relatives Jurassic to present764 current species in 9 families
Gymnophiona caecilians and relatives Jurassic to present215 curr |
ent species in 10 families
Allocaudata Albanerpetontidae Middle Jurassic Early Pleistocene
The actual number of species in each group depends on the taxonomic classification followed. The two most common systems are the classification adopted by the website AmphibiaWeb, University of California, Berkeley and the classification by herpetologist Darrel Frost and the American Museum of Natural History, available as the online reference database "Amphibian Species of the World". The numbers of species cited above follows Frost and the total number of known amphibian species as of March 31, 2019 is exactly 8,000, of which nearly 90 are frogs.
With the phylogenetic classification, the taxon Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a polyparaphyletic group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics. Classification varies according to the preferred phylogeny of the author and whether they use a stembased or a nodebased classification. Traditionally, amphibians as a class are |
defined as all tetrapods with a larval stage, while the group that includes the common ancestors of all living amphibians frogs, salamanders and caecilians and all their descendants is called Lissamphibia. The phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is uncertain, and Lissamphibia may possibly fall within extinct groups, like the Temnospondyli traditionally placed in the subclass Labyrinthodontia or the Lepospondyli, and in some analyses even in the amniotes. This means that advocates of phylogenetic nomenclature have removed a large number of basal Devonian and Carboniferous amphibiantype tetrapod groups that were formerly placed in Amphibia in Linnaean taxonomy, and included them elsewhere under cladistic taxonomy. If the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes is included in Amphibia, it becomes a paraphyletic group.
All modern amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, which is usually considered a clade, a group of species that have evolved from a common ancestor. The three modern orders are Anur |
a the frogs, Caudata or Urodela, the salamanders, and Gymnophiona or Apoda, the caecilians. It has been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a Temnospondyllike ancestor, and even that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, and thus of amniotes. Although the fossils of several older protofrogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest "true frog" is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona. It is anatomically very similar to modern frogs. The oldest known caecilian is another Early Jurassic species, Eocaecilia micropodia, also from Arizona. The earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China.
Authorities disagree as to whether Salientia is a superorder that includes the order Anura, or whether Anura is a suborder of the order Salientia. The Lissamphibia are traditionally divided into three orders, but an extinct salamanderlike family, the Albanerpetontidae, is now considered |
part of Lissamphibia alongside the superorder Salientia. Furthermore, Salientia includes all three recent orders plus the Triassic protofrog, Triadobatrachus.
Evolutionary history
The first major groups of amphibians "stem" developed in the Devonian period, around 370 million years ago, from lobefinned fish which were similar to the modern coelacanth and lungfish. These ancient lobefinned fish had evolved multijointed leglike fins with digits that enabled them to crawl along the sea bottom. Some fish had developed primitive lungs that help them breathe air when the stagnant pools of the Devonian swamps were low in oxygen. They could also use their strong fins to hoist themselves out of the water and onto dry land if circumstances so required. Eventually, their bony fins would evolve into limbs and they would become the ancestors to all tetrapods, including modern amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Despite being able to crawl on land, many of these prehistoric tetrapodomorph fish still spent most of |
their time in the water. They had started to develop lungs, but still breathed predominantly with gills.
Many examples of species showing transitional features have been discovered. Ichthyostega was one of the first primitive amphibians, with nostrils and more efficient lungs. It had four sturdy limbs, a neck, a tail with fins and a skull very similar to that of the lobefinned fish, Eusthenopteron. Amphibians evolved adaptations that allowed them to stay out of the water for longer periods. Their lungs improved and their skeletons became heavier and stronger, better able to support the weight of their bodies on land. They developed "hands" and "feet" with five or more digits; the skin became more capable of retaining body fluids and resisting desiccation. The fish's hyomandibula bone in the hyoid region behind the gills diminished in size and became the stapes of the amphibian ear, an adaptation necessary for hearing on dry land. An affinity between the amphibians and the teleost fish is the multifolded stru |
cture of the teeth and the paired supraoccipital bones at the back of the head, neither of these features being found elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
At the end of the Devonian period 360 million years ago, the seas, rivers and lakes were teeming with life while the land was the realm of early plants and devoid of vertebrates, though some, such as Ichthyostega, may have sometimes hauled themselves out of the water. It is thought they may have propelled themselves with their forelimbs, dragging their hindquarters in a similar manner to that used by the elephant seal. In the early Carboniferous 360 to 345 million years ago, the climate became wet and warm. Extensive swamps developed with mosses, ferns, horsetails and calamites. Airbreathing arthropods evolved and invaded the land where they provided food for the carnivorous amphibians that began to adapt to the terrestrial environment. There were no other tetrapods on the land and the amphibians were at the top of the food chain, occupying the ecological posi |
tion currently held by the crocodile. Though equipped with limbs and the ability to breathe air, most still had a long tapering body and strong tail. They were the top land predators, sometimes reaching several metres in length, preying on the large insects of the period and the many types of fish in the water. They still needed to return to water to lay their shellless eggs, and even most modern amphibians have a fully aquatic larval stage with gills like their fish ancestors. It was the development of the amniotic egg, which prevents the developing embryo from drying out, that enabled the reptiles to reproduce on land and which led to their dominance in the period that followed.
After the Carboniferous rainforest collapse amphibian dominance gave way to reptiles, and amphibians were further devastated by the PermianTriassic extinction event. During the Triassic Period 250 to 200 million years ago, the reptiles continued to outcompete the amphibians, leading to a reduction in both the amphibians' size and t |
heir importance in the biosphere. According to the fossil record, Lissamphibia, which includes all modern amphibians and is the only surviving lineage, may have branched off from the extinct groups Temnospondyli and Lepospondyli at some period between the Late Carboniferous and the Early Triassic. The relative scarcity of fossil evidence precludes precise dating, but the most recent molecular study, based on multilocus sequence typing, suggests a Late CarboniferousEarly Permian origin for extant amphibians.
The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians is a matter of debate. A 2005 molecular phylogeny, based on rDNA analysis, suggests that salamanders and caecilians are more closely related to each other than they are to frogs. It also appears that the divergence of the three groups took place in the Paleozoic or early Mesozoic around 250 million years ago, before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea and soon after their divergence from the lobefinned fish. The b |
riefness of this period, and the swiftness with which radiation took place, would help account for the relative scarcity of primitive amphibian fossils. There are large gaps in the fossil record, but the discovery of a Gerobatrachus hottoni from the Early Permian in Texas in 2008 provided a missing link with many of the characteristics of modern frogs. Molecular analysis suggests that the frogsalamander divergence took place considerably earlier than the palaeontological evidence indicates. Newer research indicates that the common ancestor of all Lissamphibians lived about 315 million years ago, and that stereospondyls are the closest relatives to the caecilians.
As they evolved from lunged fish, amphibians had to make certain adaptations for living on land, including the need to develop new means of locomotion. In the water, the sideways thrusts of their tails had propelled them forward, but on land, quite different mechanisms were required. Their vertebral columns, limbs, limb girdles and musculature neede |
d to be strong enough to raise them off the ground for locomotion and feeding. Terrestrial adults discarded their lateral line systems and adapted their sensory systems to receive stimuli via the medium of the air. They needed to develop new methods to regulate their body heat to cope with fluctuations in ambient temperature. They developed behaviours suitable for reproduction in a terrestrial environment. Their skins were exposed to harmful ultraviolet rays that had previously been absorbed by the water. The skin changed to become more protective and prevent excessive water loss.
Characteristics
The superclass Tetrapoda is divided into four classes of vertebrate animals with four limbs. Reptiles, birds and mammals are amniotes, the eggs of which are either laid or carried by the female and are surrounded by several membranes, some of which are impervious. Lacking these membranes, amphibians require water bodies for reproduction, although some species have developed various strategies for protecting or bypa |
Subsets and Splits