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Originally Posted by Ellie May  First off, let me say that this is absolutely crazy, especially if she didn't learn it in class. I guess either the teacher wants the parent to do the homework for the child or the teacher wants to get out of a job and have the parent teach the child or the teacher thinks a six year old can look this stuff up on the net.  Here is the definition of a mammal from dictionary.com.
any vertebrate of the class Mammalia, having the body more or less covered with hair, nourishing the young with milk from the mammary glands, and, with the exception of the egg-laying monotremes, giving birth to live young.
Here is the definition of monotreme which makes this all the more confusing.
any animal of the Monotremata, the most primitive order of mammals, characterized by certain birdlike and reptilian features, as hatching young from eggs, and having a single opening for the digestive, urinary, and genital organs, comprising only the duckbill and the echidnas of Australia and New Guinea.  |
i asked the teacher about it. this was her response:
Mandee,
We talked last week about how bats were the only flying mammal. So, I explained that mammals were warm-blooded, had a backbone, gave live birth, and nursed their babies. The main thing I emphasized was that they were warm-blooded. I basically told them that birds and fish, are not mammals. The one tricky one is a whale, which is a mammal. But it meets the “criteria” for being a mammal, not a fish. I hope this helps…I know it’s confusing when it’s been a while since we had it in school. I have to review to make sure I get my facts right!