Hi everyone.

I'm so glad you've come to learn with me today.

I'm Mrs Horan and I'm really looking forward to learning all about mammal life cycles with you in today's lesson.

Today's lesson is part of the unit on reproduction and the life cycles of animals.

The lesson is called Mammal Life Cycles, and we'll be learning all about the stages and changes that mammals go through during their lives.

The outcome for our lesson today is to describe the stages in the lifecycle of different mammals.

This lesson builds on what you already know about animal features and classification and is part of our big learning questions, what are living things and what are they made of and why are there similarities and differences between living things? These are the keywords that we are going to be focusing on today, mammal, lifecycle, secondary sources and research.

I'll explain these when we come to them if we need to, so we don't need to look at them too closely just now.

And here as some explanations of the keywords.

As I said, we will think about each word when we come to it during a lesson, so you don't need to look too closely at these just now.

They're just here in case you need a reminder of anything later on and want to look back for a quick check.

Our lesson today is divided into two parts.

We'll start with the first part, baby mammals.

Mammals are animals that grow and reproduce.

Can you think of any mammals? There are some on the screen there.

Perhaps you know the names of those or maybe you know some others.

How many mammals live in your home? Even if you don't have any pets, you will definitely have at least two mammals living in your home because humans are mammals.

All mammals have a specific set of characteristics.

These help us to classify them and be certain that they belong in the mammals category.

Can you remember any of the characteristics of mammals? These might be relating to the features of their bodies or how they reproduce.

How many did you think of? Let's have a look at those characteristics and see what you remembered.

All mammals are vertebrates.

This means they have a spine, also called a backbone.

You can feel your own backbone if you rub your hand up and down the middle of your back.

Can you feel those little bumps? They're all part of the smaller bones that make up your spine.

These bones are called vertebrae and it's from these bones that vertebrates get their name.

Mammals are also all warm-blooded.

This means that they can maintain their own body temperatures in different surroundings.

For example, when you go outside to play on a cold day, your body can keep your temperature stable, perhaps with the help of a coat.

All mammals have hair or fur on their bodies.

It might cover their bodies completely like on cats, or on dogs, or it might just be on parts of their bodies like on humans and elephants.

Mammals also feed on milk from their mother when they are young.

You can see the lamb in the picture there getting a drink from its mother.

And finally, all mammals give birth to live young.

This means that they're born from their mothers and they do not hatch from eggs.

We looked at a lot of pieces of information there, so let's have a quick check understanding to see how we're doing.

Look at this list of characteristics and decide which you think are characteristics of mammals.

We have A lay eggs, B, warm-blooded.

C, have scales on their bodies and D, have hair or fur.

Let's see how you did.

There are two answers here.

Did you get them both? All mammals are warm-blooded, and they all have hair or fur.

The lifecycle of a mammal is the way in which it changes as it grows.

Lifecycle is part of our keywords today and it means the stages and changes an animal goes through as it ages.

You'll probably remember having learned about lifecycles when you were younger.

The mammal lifecycle starts when mammal babies are born alive from their mothers, so they did not hatch from eggs like some other types of animals.

They're usually fully formed and ready for life on the outside world when they are born, so they might be small, but they are the shape that they will stay for the rest of their lives.

You can see the puppy there is already shaped like a dog, just a small one.

Humans are mammals.

Mammal babies look similar to their adult parents.

They are the same shape.

They have all the same parts.

They're just smaller.

Think about human babies.

You might have some little humans in your family or you might have seen pictures of yourself when you were a baby.

You can also see a picture there of some adult humans with a baby.

How are human babies different from their parents? How are they similar? You can use the picture here to help you think about this.

Mammal babies are smaller than adult mammals, but they have the same shape and structure as their parents, so if we think about humans, when we are born we have arms, legs, and a head, the same as adult humans, but we are smaller and the arms and legs are shorter.

The same is true other mammals.

Remember that picture of the puppy we just saw? The puppy had four legs and a tail, just like adult dogs have.

The hair or fur on baby mammals may look different to that of adults.

You can see in the picture there that the fur of the wild boar piglet has patches and stripes, while its mother's fur is all brown.

As well as changing colour, the amount of fur a mammal has may change over time as well.

For humans, babies are born with less hair on their bodies than adult humans have.

Whereas some animals, such as dolphins and whales, are born with some fine hair that they then lose as they grow.

Mammal babies are not able to do as many things as adult mammals.

They need to learn skills such as picking things up, walking and communicating as they grow up.

Think about what you needed help with when you were a baby.

You couldn't walk or talk or even pick things up.

In fact, when human babies are born, they don't even know how to smile yet.

Luckily, mammal parents usually stay with their babies, look after them while they can't do things for themselves and help them learn skills like moving around, communicating and finding food.

For the first part of their lifecycle, mammal babies feed on milk made by their mother.

You can see some hungry piglets all having a drink in the picture there.

As mammals grow older, they become able to eat other foods.

As they grow, their digestive systems become able to cope with different foods and they grow teeth and learn how to safely chew and swallow food.

Time are the quick check-in on your understanding.

Match the lifecycle stage to the correct descriptions.

You can see we only have two items on the left and four on the right, so some of these statements will have more than one line coming out of them.

We have adult mammals and baby mammals on the left and on the right we have "Are larger", "Are smaller", "Feed on a range of foods" and "Feed on milk from their mother".

Pause the video here to have a go at matching those up.

Let's see how you did.

So for adult mammals, we should have lines going to are larger and feed on a range of foods.

For baby mammals, we have lines going to the other two statements, they are smaller and they feed on milk from their mother.

Now let's apply our new learning to a practise task.

Choose a mammal and find out what it's like as a baby.

You could find out its size when it's born, what it looks like when it's born.

If the baby animal has a special name, for example, kitten, lamb or puppy, and how long it drinks milk from its mother.

Pause the video now go and carry out your research and come back when you're done.

Welcome back.

How did you do? Did you find out anything really interesting? These children carried out some research into their favourite mammals and here's what they found out.

Lucas found out that baby kangaroos are called joeys.

Sam found out that chimpanzees drink their mothers' milk until they are around five years old and Aisha found out that hamster babies are called pups and they do not have any fur at all when they're born.

Let's move on to the second part of our lesson now, finding out about mammal lifecycles.

There are three stages in the mammal lifecycle.

The first stage is the baby stage.

The next stage is a young mammal, and finally there is the adult stage.

You can see in these pictures how one type of mammal, humans, changes across these three stages.

Can you see the similarities and differences across each stage? You have all experienced the baby stage and are in the young stage now.

How have you changed over this time? How are you going to keep changing in the future? Let's take a closer look at each of these stages starting with babies.

When mammals are babies, they feed on their mother's milk.

This is because their digestive systems aren't ready yet for other solid foods and they may not have grown teeth or learned the skills of chewing and swallowing food.

Mammal babies may need help from their parents to survive.

Luckily, for most mammals, their parents stay around to look after them when they are young.

This is one of the reasons mammals often don't have a lot of babies at once.

If they had too many, then it would be too hard to look after them all at once.

Some types of animals have lots and lots of young at once.

For example, amphibians lay 100s of eggs at once.

In fact, frogs can lay up to 4,000 eggs at one time.

Can you imagine looking after 4,000 babies at once? Mammals have far fewer babies than this though, so they're able to help and provide for the babies that they do have.

They find food for them, keep them safe and warm and start teaching them how to look after themselves.

As they grow into young mammals, they stop feeding from their mother, and start eating other foods.

Their bodies and brains are developing so they're able to cope with a range of different solid foods.

They may even be beginning to find some food for themselves.

You can see how the young wild boar there changed from when it was a baby.

It's bigger, it's heavier, and its face looks less babyish.

This is the same case for most mammals.

Young mammals are more independent than babies, but they may still need their parents' help to survive.

Their skills are still developing so they're not completely ready to go it alone.

Different animals spend different amounts of time at this stage.

Humans are considered young until they reach their age of around 16 to 18 years, whereas kittens only need to stay with their mother until they are around 12 to 14 weeks old.

This time will depend on how long the animal takes to be ready to survive on its own.

How well do you think you would've done if you had no adults around to help you when you were 12 to 14 weeks old? The kittens though, this is enough time for them to have learned the skills they need.

The final stage in the mammal lifecycle is the adult stage.

You can see how wild boar there is bigger than when it was young.

Its fur has changed too, which also happens for some other mammals.

When mammals are adults, they can look after themselves.

They can find their own food and move around to keep themselves safe from predators.

Adult mammals can reproduce and have babies of their own, continuing the lifecycle.

Animals that are not yet adults are not able to reproduce because their bodies haven't yet developed enough to be capable of having offspring.

Let's have another quick check on our understanding of the lessons so far.

Can you name each lifecycle stage? One, the mammal has recently been born, is very small and feeds on its mother's milk.

What is the name of that lifecycle stage? Two, the mammal is larger, gaining independence and now eats a range of different foods.

Can you remember the name for that stage in the mammal's lifecycle? And finally three, the mammal is fully grown and able to reproduce.

What is that lifecycle stage called? If you need a little more time to name those lifecycle stages, pause the video here to have a go.

Okay, let's see how we did.

The first lifecycle stage where the mammal is still very small and needs milk from its mother is called the baby stage.

Then we have the young stage where the mammal is starting to gain more independence and eats a range of different foods.

And finally, when the mammal is fully grown and able to reproduce, it's in the adult stage.

Mammal cycles take place over a long time, from months to years, depending on the animal.

Elephants take around 15 years to grow from babies to adults.

Even animals that grow and develop more quickly take a long time.

Mice are one of the fastest growing mammals and it still takes them around three months to reach the adult stage.

Bearing this in mind then, the amount of time these life cycles take.

How could we find out about the life cycles of different animals? We can learn about the life cycles of mammals by observing them over time and seeing how they grow and change.

Sometimes scientists do this in places like zoos and farms where the animals can be easily monitored and sometimes it's done in the wild, with scientists tracking and observing animals over a period of time.

As you can imagine, this is much harder than keeping track of an animal in an enclosure at the zoo or farm, but it's important for scientists to do this work because it gives us really helpful information about how animals live outside of captivity and how we can help them to survive and thrive in the wild.

How else can we find out about the lifecycles of mammals? Are there any ways you can think of that wouldn't take as long as observing a whole lifecycle taking place? We can also learn about mammal lifecycles by carrying out research using secondary sources of information.

As you can see, we have all of our keywords for today's lesson in that sentence.

We've covered the terms mammal and lifecycle already.

And to research something is to find out about it or to investigate it carefully.

Secondary sources are sources of information that have been gathered by someone else, so information texts, online articles, factual TV programmes and informational videos are all types of secondary sources.

We can use them when we're not able to do an investigation ourselves.

We don't have the time today to watch an animal grow from a baby to an adult, and we definitely don't have the animals, but we can still do some learning about mammal lifecycles by using secondary sources.

Are secondary sources of information always reliable? Sometimes people who have made these sources of information did not have all the facts themselves.

When you are using secondary sources of information, make sure to look at who created it and think about whether it is likely to be a reliable source of information.

We should never just assume something is correct just because it appears in a book or online.

Lifecycles can be represented using a lifecycles diagram.

This is a lifecycle diagram.

You can see that it shows the stages in a mammal's life and the order in which they come.

They have the name and a simple picture of each stage and arrows pointing in the direction that the cycle moves.

Now really helpful, quickly and clearly communicating the stages in an animal's lifecycle and for looking at how the animal changes over time.

This is a lifecycle diagram.

You can see that it shows the stages in a mammal's life and the order in which they come.

They have the name and a simple picture of each stage and arrows pointing in the direction that the cycle moves.

They're really helpful for quickly and clearly communicating the stages in an animal's lifecycle and for looking at how the animal changes over time.

You can see in this lifecycle diagram of a chimpanzee that the baby looks similar to the adult, just smaller, with shorter arms and legs.

You can see that it appears to grow longer fur and longer arms and legs as it develops through the young stage and into being an adult.

Time for another quick check for understanding.

Here is a diagram showing the lifecycle of a lion.

What stage is missing from this lifecycle diagram? Well done, the young stage was missing.

Now, can you answer this question? Why do we use lifecycle diagrams? Is it A, because they're easy to draw? B, because they include a lot of detail about the animal or C, because they show the stages in an animal's life? The answer is C.

We use lifecycle diagrams because they show the stages in an animal's life.

Let's apply this new knowledge to a practise task now This task has two parts.

First, continue researching your mammal from task A and find out what it is like when it is young and when it's an adult.

Then use your research to create a lifecycle diagram for your mammal that shows each stage clearly.

Your diagram will need to have all of the key features of a lifecycle diagram, so make sure to include the name of each stage, a simple picture of each one, an arrow showing the order that the stages come in.

Pause the video here and have a go at researching your animal and creating the lifecycle diagram.

How did you do? Which part of the task did you find more challenging, carrying out your research or drawing your diagram? Here's mine, I decided to find out about rabbits because they're one of my favourite animals.

You can use mine to help you see if yours has everything it needs.

So like mine, your diagram should include the name and a picture of the baby mammal, the young mammal and the adult mammal, and it should have arrows showing the order of growth.

That brings us to the end of our lesson today.

Let's refresh ourselves on the key learning from this lesson.

Mammals are living things that grow and reproduce.

They're born alive from their mother.

The stages of a mammal's life are birth young and adult.

This can be shown in a diagram We can find out about lifecycles by observing changes over time or carrying out research using secondary sources.

Thank you so much for joining me today to learn about mammal lifecycles and thank you for your careful researching and diagram drawing.

I hope you enjoyed today's lesson as much as I did.

See you again next time.