Interestingly, Milan Kubiatko of J. E. Purkyne University, Faculty of Science, and Pavol Prokop of Comenius University in Bratislava have analyzed this subject on an academic level. In 2007, they published a paper, called "Pupils' misconceptions about mammals" and presented quite a few intriguing findings.
Focusing on children aged 10 to 15, they developed a questionnaire with 35 multiple choice and open-ended questions. The researchers then handed out these questionnaires to 468 children from 6 elementary schools in Slovakia, Europe.
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"The children's ideas were examined in five dimensions (animal classification and phylogeny; food; foraging strategies; parental care; senses, morphology, and anatomy)," Kubiatko and Prokop wrote, adding that they found "serious misconceptions" about mammals across all age groups.
For example, the majority of the children incorrectly thought that dinosaurs were closely related to mammoths (51%) and whales (8%) rather than birds (41%). And only 47.4% of the children surveyed knew that lions usually hunt in groups.
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Also, the children had great misconceptions about the contents of the camel's hump. Nearly 80% said it's where the animal stores water and only 20% of the children answered correctly—the hump contains fat.
However, most of the children (91.8%) knew that whales did not lay eggs and that the function of the kangaroo's pouch is carrying young (95%). They got plenty of other questions right as well.
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