Parent and Baby Animals Lab

Pick a parent animal and meet its baby. Look at the traits the baby inherits, record what you find in a table, and discover why some baby animals look very different from their parents.

Guided Experiment: Parent and Offspring Traits Investigation

Do all baby animals look just like their parents, only smaller? Write your prediction before you start.

Write your hypothesis in the Lab Report panel, then click Next.

Pick an Animal Pair

Meet the Pair

DogParent
PuppyBaby

Inherited Traits (4)

  • four legs
  • fur coat
  • tail
  • same face shape
The baby looks like a smaller version of the parent.
Fun fact. Puppies are born with their eyes and ears closed. They open at about two weeks old.

Controls

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Reference Guide

What Are Inherited Traits

An inherited trait is a feature that a baby animal gets from its parents. Dogs have puppies with fur and four legs. Ducks have ducklings with webbed feet and feathers.

Examples of inherited traits. Body shape, number of legs, fur or feathers, eye color, and sounds the animal makes.

Baby animals are always the same kind as their parents. A kitten is never born from a duck.

Looking Alike

Many baby animals look like a smaller version of their parent. A puppy looks like a tiny dog. A calf looks like a small cow.

Dog. Puppies look like small dogs.
Cat. Kittens look like small cats.
Horse. Foals look like small horses.

Even when a baby looks like its parent, each one is a little different. Puppies in the same litter can have different spots or colors.

Metamorphosis

Some animals change a lot as they grow. This big change is called metamorphosis. The baby stage can look very different from the adult.

Frog. Tadpoles swim with gills and a tail before growing legs.
Butterfly. Caterpillars crawl and eat leaves before forming a chrysalis.

Even though they look different at first, tadpoles still grow into frogs and caterpillars still grow into butterflies.

How to Use the Lab

Pick an animal pair from the grid. Read the list of inherited traits. Click Add to Table to record the pair. Pick another pair and keep going.

Quick tip. Click Add All Eight Pairs to record every pair at once, then switch to the Data Table tab to see them together.

Open the Guided Experiment to follow the full investigation, write a hypothesis, and answer the questions at the end.