What Does a Zoologist Do?

What Does a Zoologist Do?

What Does a Zoologist Do?
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 5 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	6.82

Vocabulary

challenging words:

emus, ichthyologists, jelly-like, mammalogists, ornithologists, warm-blooded, zoologist, conservation, development, invertebrate, behavior, herpetologists, study, environment, rainforest, public

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What Does a Zoologist Do?
By Cindy Grigg

¹     Zoologists study animals and their development, behavior, and diseases. They usually are named for the animal group that they study. Ornithologists study birds, mammalogists study mammals, herpetologists study reptiles, and ichthyologists study fish.

²     Animals are grouped by common characteristics. Some animals have a backbone, and they are called vertebrates. Do you have a backbone? Then you are a vertebrate, too! There are five main animal groups in the vertebrate grouping. Mammals are animals that give birth to live babies, have hair on their bodies, are warm-blooded, breathe air with lungs, and nurse their babies with milk from the mother's body. People are mammals. Cows, dogs, cats, and whales are all mammals, too.

³     Birds are animals that have feathers, lay eggs with a hard shell, breathe air with lungs, and are warm-blooded. All birds have wings, but not all birds fly. Penguins use their wings as paddles to help them swim. Ostrich and emus are too large and heavy to fly with the small wings they have. Birds also have beaks.

Paragraphs 4 to 9:
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