What the Long Studies Show: teacher key

Baby Animals, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. Seventy-five years of nest boxes, tiny tags on salmon and drones over whales. See what researchers have learned by following young animals.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. How many Wytham great tit generations have researchers followed?
   • About 5
   • More than 55 (answer)
   • About 500
2. What does the best number of eggs for a great tit depend on?
   • How much food, such as caterpillars, is around when chicks need feeding (answer)
   • The size of the nest box
   • The year
3. What did the drone study find about humpback mothers?
   • They grew in volume
   • They shrank in body volume while nursing (answer)
   • They stopped nursing
4. What do modern studies say about Audubon's phoebe claim?
   • They prove it
   • They doubt it (answer)
   • They never looked
5. Which gives scientists more reliable evidence about young birds?
   • Following individually marked birds for many years (answer)
   • One quick look
   • A guess
6. What does banding mean here?
   • Singing together
   • Marking wild birds so they can be followed (answer)
   • Making milk

Words

• banding: ring tagging
• imprinting: early following
• generations: family stages
• incubator: egg warmer
• precocial: ready at birth