Your teacher tells you that there are 59,811 different species of vertebrates on Earth and 9956 of these are birds. What percentage (\%) of vertebrate species are birds? Round your answer to the nearest whole number.

To find the percentage of vertebrate species that are birds, we can use the formula: \[ \text{Percentage} = \left( \frac{\text{Number of bird species}}{\text{Total number of vertebrate species}} \right) \times 100 \] Given: - Total number of vertebrate species = 59,811 - Number of bird species = 9,956 Substitute the values into the formula: \[ \text{Percentage} = \left( \frac{9,956}{59,811} \right) \times 100 \] Now, we can calculate the percentage. Calculate the value by following steps: - step0: Calculate: \(\frac{9956}{59811}\times 100\) - step1: Multiply: \(\frac{9956\times 100}{59811}\) - step2: Multiply: \(\frac{995600}{59811}\) The percentage of vertebrate species that are birds is approximately 16.65%. Rounding this to the nearest whole number, we get 17%.