Lesson Idea

7 Scientific Articles about Mammals

This collection features seven of SJK’s adapted research articles on mammals. All mammals are warm-blooded, have hair and backbones, and nourish their young with milk, and most give birth to live young. Mammals are the class of creatures to which humans belong, along with aardvarks, bats, otters, zebras, and more. There are over 5,400 species of mammals!

Engage students in exploring this broad class of creatures using the scientific method. Each article comes with standards-matched adaptations, introductory video content, comprehension questions, and vocabulary to further the lesson outcomes. Each adapted article also comes with additional suggestions for activities to enhance the readers’ understanding and make the class more exciting.

Click the button below to view our full catalog of adapted research articles on mammals.

All Articles About Mammals

1. How can cheetahs and farmers get along better?

Abstract: Sometimes humans and animals come into conflict with each other. This can threaten people’s livelihoods and also threaten the animals’ lives. In central Namibia, farmers have a problem with cheetahs. The cheetahs prey on their baby cows (calves). In turn, the farmers often try to kill the wild cats in order to protect their cattle! Wouldn’t it be great if we could study the situation and find a solution that suits both the farmers and the cheetahs? This is what we did. We tracked the cheetah’s behavior. We figured out how farmers could manage their cattle so that cheetahs don’t eat the calves. This could prevent farmers from losing their valuable livestock and stop them from trying to kill the cheetahs.

This article is suitable for middle school and lower high school students. An audio version is available in English, and written translations are available in Bulgarian and German.

Key terms: cheetah, habitat, mammals, wildlife
Scientific figures: bar graph
Scientific method: experiment, field study, GPS tracking, observation

2. How well can apes remember their friends?

Abstract: There are cute stories of zoo-living apes that seem to recognize their former caregivers. They also seem to recognize familiar apes and tell them apart from strangers. But we don’t know how detailed their memory is. We also don’t know how long their memory lasts. Humans have good social memories, and other great apes are our closest living relatives. We wanted to know if long-lasting social memory is a trait we share with other great apes. We tested the ability of apes to recognize familiar individuals after spending years apart. We used an eye-tracker to see how long apes looked at two side-by-side images of other apes. We found that apes looked longer at previous groupmates than at strangers. They also looked longer at groupmates with whom they had positive interactions. This helps us understand the evolutionary history of social memory in great apes.

This article is suitable for middle school students. An audio version is available in English. This article includes an SJK Academy Research Recap video summarizing the content.

Key terms: animal behavior, evolution, extinction, mammals, neuroscience, veterinary medicine
Scientific figures: bar graph
Scientific method: experiment, representative sampling

3. How do parasites affect mouse behavior?

Abstract: Have you ever heard of Toxoplasma gondii? It’s a tiny parasite that can infect animals’ brains. Moreover, it can change their behavior! We captured mice on Kangaroo Island in Australia and examined their brains. We searched for changes in the brain associated with infection. We found alterations in specific genes related to behavior in infected male mice. These changes made the mice less afraid of cats – their natural enemy! Interestingly, we observed no such changes in infected female mice. These findings help us understand how parasites might affect the behavior of the organisms they infect.

This article is suitable for middle school students. An audio version is available in English. This article includes a Lesson Idea video exploring common symptoms of toxoplasmosis and prevention strategies.

Key terms: animal behavior, disease control, genetics, immunity, mammals, parasite, veterinary medicine
Scientific figures: map, microscopy image
Scientific method: experiment, field study, representative sampling

4. How do dolphin mothers speak with their babies?

Abstract: Have you ever noticed that people speak differently to babies and toddlers? Caregivers, particularly mothers, change their speech when talking to young children. How? Their speech includes higher pitches. They also use a wider pitch range and shorter sentences. Scientists call these changes in speech patterns child-directed communication, but you can think of it as baby talk. We wanted to find out if bottlenose dolphins also use child-directed communication. We analyzed the sounds made by female dolphins and found that they used higher frequency whistles when they were with their calves. We also found that the frequency range of their whistles increased. Like humans, bottlenose dolphins speak differently to youngsters than to adults.

This article is suitable for middle school students. An audio version is available in English and Spanish, and a written translation is available in Spanish.

Key terms: animal behavior, dolphins, echolocation, mammals, mother, physics, wildlife
Scientific figures: line graph
Scientific method: field study, observation

5. How can leopard seals survive climate change?

Abstract: Have you ever been by yourself and needed to get something off a high shelf, but couldn’t reach? Now imagine you had your whole class with you. It’s likely that someone in your class could reach the high shelf. Variability in traits (and behaviors) is a good thing. It means that groups of organisms can adjust and survive when environments change. We know that animals living at the North and South Poles, especially large predators, are in danger because of the changing climate. We wanted to look at variability in the traits and behaviors of polar predators to assess how they will adapt to climate change. We tagged and studied a population of leopard seals in Antarctica. We looked at their morphology, movement patterns, and diving behavior. We found lots of variability in these traits in the leopard seal population, especially between males and females. We think this high variability may help leopard seals survive better in the changing Antarctic environment.

This article is suitable for middle school and lower high school students. An audio version is available in English and Spanish, and a written translation is available in Spanish. This article includes an Ask-A-Scientist interview with the original researcher Dr. Sarah Kienle.

Key terms: animal behavior, climate change, climate change adaptation, food chain, mammals, sea ice
Scientific figures: bar graph, map
Scientific method: field study, GPS tracking, observation, scientific modeling

6. How can we detect rare animals?

Abstract: Did you know that scientists can use DNA to figure out which organisms have been in an area? Organisms leave DNA behind in the environment. We call this DNA environmental DNA (eDNA). Using eDNA is a new technique that scientists have used in water environments. We wanted to figure out if this same technique could work to find species on land. We collected soil samples containing eDNA from golden moles in the western part of southern Africa. These mammals are hard to observe because they live underground and some species are rare. People believed that one species, De Winton’s golden mole, might be extinct. We extracted eDNA from soil samples. Then we compared the eDNA to DNA samples we collected from golden moles and from databases. We found that all four golden mole species live in this region of Africa. That means that we can use eDNA to find rare animals in land environments. It also means that De Winton’s golden mole is not extinct!

This article is suitable for middle school and lower high school students. An audio version is available in English. This article includes an SJK Academy Research Recap video summarizing the content. This article also includes a Lesson Idea video to engage students in building and extracting DNA.

Key terms: extinction, genetics, mammals, molecular biology
Scientific figures: pictograph
Scientific method: DNA sequencing

7. What can we learn about aging from naked mole-rats?

Abstract: Did you know that naked mole-rats don’t age the same way humans and other mammals do? These incredible rodents don’t seem to age physically and they are resistant to age-related diseases. That’s why they can live over 30 years! Scientists are trying to understand how aging works in naked mole-rats so that they can better understand aging in humans. We conducted a DNA analysis of naked mole-rat tissue to find out if their DNA shows signs of aging. We discovered that naked mole-rats do age on a molecular level like other mammals. Identifying where the DNA changed in naked mole-rats allowed us to predict what effects these changes might have on the body. We also found that members of a naked mole-rat community age faster than their queen.

This article is suitable for elementary school and middle school students. This article includes both an upper reading level and a lower reading level adaptation. An audio version is available in both English and Spanish, and a written translation is available in Spanish. This article includes a Lesson Idea video to engage students in building and extracting DNA.

Key terms: aging, dual reading level, genetics, mammals
Scientific figures: bar graph
Scientific method: DNA sequencing, experiment