Mammals

What is a Mammal?

• Mammals are animals that have hair, are warm-blooded, and nourish their young with milk

• Other animals don’t do these things

• Some modern-day mammals include people, apes, dogs, mice, elephants, pandas, and many more.

Mammals are warm blooded. 

The temperature could be freezing cold

or boiling hot,  

but mammals’ bodies are built to maintain just about the same temperature all the time. 

Warm blood lets the mammals be very active and live in a wide variety of places.

•Polar bears live in very cold areas.  •Camels live in hot areas. 

•Moles live under the ground.  •Bats live in caves and fly in the air.  •Dolphins live in the oceans. 

•Fur and fat help protect mammals who live in the cold. 

•Mammals sweat or pant to release extra heat if they live somewhere toasty.

More about Mammals

The Different Types of Diets

• There are four types of diets that mammals can have. They can be:

• Herbivores• Carnivores• Omnivores• Insectivores

Herbivores• Herbivores are plant eaters. • Some herbivores are:

• beavers• cows• horses • pandas • sloths• and others

Carnivores• Carnivores are meat eaters.• Some carnivores are:

• whales and dolphins • dogs• tigers • lions • and others

Omnivore• Omnivores eat both plants and meat.• Some omnivores are:

• People• some bears• and others

Insectivore• Insectivores eat insects.• Some insectivores are:

• Aardvarks• Anteaters• and others

Fastest and Slowest

• The fastest mammal (also the fastest land animal) it the Cheetah. The cheetah runs between 60 and 70 miles per hour.

• The slowest mammal is the sloth. The sloth moves less than 1 mile per hour.

Biggest and Smallest• The biggest mammal also

known as the biggest animal that ever lived on Earth is the blue whale.

• The biggest land mammal is the African Elephant

• The tallest mammal is the giraffe

• The smallest mammals are the pygmy shrew and the bumblebee bat.

• The pygmy shrew weighs between 1.2 and 2.7 grams. The bumblebee bat weighs about 2 grams

Loudest and Fattest

• The loudest mammal is the blue whale.

• The second loudest is the howler monkey.

• The fattest mammal is the blue whale who has thickest layer of blubber, but the ringed seal pups have the greatest percentage of fat (about 50%).