Question

Some of the members of the protist kingdom have to take in food from their environment in order to survive as members of the animal kingdom. why are these organisms classified as protists and not as animals?

Answer 1

Protists are single cellular eukaryotes. An animal is a multicellular eukaryote. Although a protist may be eating from its environment it may also be single cellular and therefore is a protist.

Answer 2

There could be many reasons for classifying the organisms as protists rather than animals, for example, animals are usually multicellular eukaryotic organisms whereas protists are usually unicellular eukaryotes. In addition, if they exist as multicellular, they do not have any specialized organ or tissues.

Some of the protists may lack specialized cell organelles as found in the animal cells.