Zoophyte

Zoophyte is an outdated name for an invertebrate animal that looks like a plant . Examples are sea ​​anemone , sponge and coral . The term is no longer used in today's scientific language.

Such living beings were often cited as a typical example of the indeterminacy of the terms animal and plant , for example in Friedrich Schleiermacher's Dialectic (ed. Jonas, § 142), similar to the platypus that appears in this function in a book by Umberto Eco .

The name goes back to Edward Wotton (De differentiis animalium libri decem, 1552).