Knowing Your Own: teacher key

Animal Families, grade 8 edition, written for 8th grade. In a crowd of animals, how do parents find their own young, and why do some animals help ones that are not their own? Find out how families recognize each other.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What must emperor penguin chicks do in order to be fed?
   • Dance
   • Recognize and answer their parents' calls (answer)
   • Leave the colony
2. What do flamingo parents do that shows they know their own chick?
   • No parent feeds a chick other than its own (answer)
   • They feed every chick
   • They never feed chicks
3. How long has an orca pod's dialect been shown to stay the same?
   • One year
   • Two months
   • Up to six generations (answer)
4. What is probably the best explanation for older wolf siblings helping with pups?
   • Hunger
   • Kin selection (answer)
   • Weather
5. What do vampire bats share, and with whom?
   • Dens, with wolves
   • Whistles, with orcas
   • Blood meals, with relatives and non-relatives (answer)
6. What does dominant mean in this book?
   • Top-ranking (answer)
   • Very small
   • Newly born

Words

• dialect: group sound pattern
• siblings: brothers and sisters
• cohesive: sticking together
• generations: family age groups
• dominant: top-ranking
• regurgitation: food brought up