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Deer on the Wind, Crows That Remember

Grade 6 life science: deer alert distances and a crow mask survey show how sense receptors send signals that lead to behavior or memories.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-LS1-8

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
13 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use alert-distance data to explain which sense receptors detected a stimulus.
Students use survey data to explain how a stored memory leads to a later behavior.

How to use

Read the passage together and have students name the stimulus and the receptors for each condition before they answer; the open response works well as a short class discussion afterward.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-LS1-8

Explain how sense receptors send signals to the brain that lead to behavior or are stored as memories.

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Deer on the Wind, Crows That Remember

Use two wildlife refuge surveys to trace signals from sense receptors to the brain.

Survey 1: How deer notice a walker

Read the passage and Table 1, then answer questions 1–7.

Two Surveys at Pine Hollow

1Pine Hollow National Wildlife Refuge protects forest, meadows and marsh along a slow river. The refuge, the people and the numbers here are made up, but they are based on real wildlife studies. Each fall, volunteers help refuge biologist Dr. Anton Revell survey the animals. This year, sixth grader Keziah Morales joined two of his surveys.

2The first survey studied how white-tailed deer notice people. Deer have sense receptors in their eyes, ears and noses, and nerves carry signals from these receptors to the brain. In each trial, a walker in a bright orange vest walked slowly and steadily across an open meadow toward one feeding deer. Keziah stood still, far off to one side, with a laser rangefinder. She recorded the distance between the walker and the deer at the moment the deer lifted its head and stared toward the walker. Dr. Revell calls this the alert distance.

3Every trial used the same meadow, walking speed, vest and time of morning, on days with a light, steady wind. The walker never spoke. Two things changed: the direction the wind blew and whether the deer could see the walker. In Condition C, the walker moved along the far side of a thick row of shrubs that hid her from view. Each trial used a different deer, and each condition had 8 trials.

4The second survey studied American crows. Last fall, a banding crew caught 7 crows in a net near the refuge's tool yard, put a small band on each bird's leg and released it unharmed. Every crew member wore the same rubber mask of a gray-bearded face, which the crew calls the trapper mask. Nobody wore that mask again until this fall.

5This fall, Keziah and Dr. Revell walked the same 1 km route past the tool yard 18 times, on different days at the same time of morning. On 6 walks the walker wore the trapper mask, on 6 walks a neutral mask with a different face that had never been worn near the crows, and on 6 walks no mask. The walker wore the same clothes, walked at the same speed, never spoke and never fed or bothered the crows. Keziah counted the crows that scolded the walker by giving loud, harsh calls and diving toward the walker's head. She counted each scolding crow only once per walk.