section_path: Taxonomic range/Animals
section_name: Animals
paragraph_text: Animals
  
  Injury in animals is sometimes defined as mechanical damage to anatomical structure, but it has a wider connotation of physical damage with any cause, including drowning, burns, and poisoning. Such damage may result from attempted predation, territorial fights, falls, and abiotic factors.
  
  Injury prompts an inflammatory response in animals of many different phyla; this prompts coagulation of the blood or body fluid, followed by wound healing, which may be rapid, as in the cnidaria. Arthropods are able to repair injuries to the cuticle that forms their exoskeleton to some extent.
  
  Animals in several phyla, including annelids, arthropods, cnidaria, molluscs, nematodes, and vertebrates are able to produce antimicrobial peptides to fight off infection following an injury.