For biologists to order this mass of information, a scientific system called taxonomy was introduced. We have attempted to simplify this system in our Tree of Life . This tree is not aimed at the Biology professor, but at informing the interested amateur. The basic idea is to group species with similar characteristics together into families, and to group the families together into broader groupings. To this end, the taxonomic catagories were devised, and they create the taxonomic hierarchy.
Wolves are a good example.
When naming a species, it is customary to use the binomial system, introduced by Linnaeus in 1753. Many organisms have common names , but these are often confusing as the same organism can be known in different parts of the world by many various different common names. Likewise the same common name can be applied to different species, depending on the geographical area. There is an alternative system for catagorising organisms - cladistics . This system uses the idea of ancestry as it's basis for dividing organisms into clades .