Class: This category includes related orders. For example, order Primata comprising monkey, gorilla and gibbon is placed in class Mammalia along with order Carnivora that includes animals like tiger, cat and dog. Class Mammalia has other orders also.
Phylum: Classes comprising animals like fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds along with mammals constitute the next higher category called Phylum.
All these, based on the common features like presence of notochord and dorsal hollow neural system, are included in phylum Chordata. In case of plants, classes with a few similar characters are assigned to a higher category called Division.
