By Tribune Content Agency, adapted by Newsela staff
A pig named Porkchop is hamming it up all over the state of Connecticut. She’s bringing joy to schools, nursing homes and birthday parties, too.
Porkchop is a mini pig, so she’s much smaller than the pigs you would see at a farm. Right now, she weighs about 50 pounds (23 kilograms). That’s about as much as a medium-sized dog.
“I take her everywhere,” said Porkchop’s owner and trainer Jess Moffo. “She lightens my heart, and I see the effect she has on other people,” Moffo said. “She’s so gentle and caring.”
In September, Moffo and Porkchop visited Southington High School in Southington, Connecticut. Moffo has Porkchop travel in a dog stroller so she can be at eye level with the people she meets. The students loved helping the pig move through an obstacle course by feeding her blueberries. “Porkchop is just a wonderful break for our students,” said Kristine Frattini, who works at the school. “Porkchop changes the mood of the day.”
Moffo lives in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut with her husband, four dogs and Porkchop. She’s been working with the pig over the past year so that Porkchop can become a therapy pig. Therapy animals help people cope with their physical and mental health. They can make people feel happier and help calm them if they are upset. There are all sorts of therapy animals. There are therapy horses, therapy dogs and therapy pigs, too.
Porkchop has a lot to learn before she can become an official therapy pig. She has to be able to take a treat gently from a person’s hand. She has to be able to walk calmly among people. She also has to come when her name is called and obey the commands sit, stay, and leave it. Once Porkchop is officially certified as a therapy pig, Moffo plans to visit kids and veterans in hospitals. Still, right now, Porkchop can visit places like schools and nursing homes.
Greta Perrin works at a nursing home in Woodbridge, Connecticut, that Porkchop visits. “The residents love that she comes to each one of them and they can feed her,” Perrin said. “Everyone can pet her. A few people held her. It absolutely makes their day.” One resident wouldn’t get out of bed for six months. But she got up when she heard Porkchop was coming, Perrin said.
Moffo recently brought Porkchop to a kid’s birthday party, too. “The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever,” said Michelle Follert, who threw the party for her 4-year-old daughter Olive.
Porkchop wags her curved tail at the sight of people. She loves to snuggle and cuddle. At Moffo’s home, she has a farm-themed room with five beds to choose from throughout the house. The oversized canopy bed she got for her second birthday is her favorite, Moffo said.
Porkchop is so well trained that when she hears, “It’s bedtime,” she runs right into her room. She’s also potty trained: she even has a special grunt for being let out to go. And she has a full wardrobe of outfits, jackets and T-shirts.
In her therapy pig role, Porkchop sits on laps and accepts hugs. She also does a few tricks, such as spinning. And she moves through obstacle courses that require her to jump.
“Seeing what she does for these other people, it makes me feel like she’s making a difference,” Moffo said. “You can definitely see they’re overjoyed.”
Moffo said it took a lot of work to train Porkchop. It was important to get Porkchop used to being with people. So Moffo brings Porkchop to stores and even big, crowded cities like Boston. When there, Moffo had Porkchop wait in line with her to pick up a cannoli, an Italian dessert, at a bakery. Porkchop’s diet is usually extremely healthy. She eats lots of fruits and vegetables. But she does sometimes get treats. So, yes, Porkchop got a cannoli too!
How does Porkchop travel when visiting places?
What does Porkchop need to learn to become an official therapy dog?
What did one nursing home resident do when she heard Porkchops was coming?
Read the Introduction [paragraphs 1 - 4].
Select the sentence from the introduction that shows that Jess Moffo enjoys working with Porkchop.
Read the section "Porkchop Goes to School to be a Therapy Pig."
Which sentence from the section shows WHY Porkchop is still working to become an official therapy pig.
What effect has Porkchop’s training had on her?
According to the section “Porkchop Goes To School To Be A Therapy Pig,” HOW do therapy animals help people?
By Science News for Students, adapted by Newsela staff
Clifford is a big red dog. In Disney and Pixar’s “Turning Red,” Mei turns into a red panda, the size of a grizzly bear. However, giants like these do not exist in real life, and the reason has to do with heat.
Some of the largest animals on Earth are mammals. A mammal is an animal that breathes air, has a backbone and grows hair at some point during its life.
Mammals can only get so large on land, said Felisa Smith. She’s a paleoecologist, which is a scientist that studies ancient ecosystems. (An ecosystem is a community made of plants, animals and other tiny living things.) Smith works at the University of New Mexico.
Smith said if animals were only limited by the amount of weight their legs could carry, a four-legged animal could get as large as 109 metric tons (120 tons). That is a bit larger than a 737 airplane or the largest dinosaurs to ever roam the planet. But there is no real use in being that large. “Your legs would have to be so big to support your body that you couldn’t move,” Smith said.
Today’s largest land mammals are male African bush elephants. They are tiny in comparison. They weigh only 6 metric tons (almost 7 tons). That is about as heavy as three cars. Paraceratherium was the largest known land mammal. It weighed around 16 metric tons (almost 18 tons). It lived in Europe and Asia, some 30 million years ago, and looked like a cross between a giant rhinoceros and a huge horse.
But why can’t mammals get any larger? It all has to do with heat.
Mammals are endotherms. This means that they have to keep their bodies at a constant warm temperature. They digest food to generate energy to stay warm. Today’s reptiles are different. Reptiles are cold-blooded animals with backbones and scaly bodies.
Reptiles are ectotherms. This means their body temperature varies with the environment. Reptiles can’t be active in the cold like mammals. However, they also save a lot of energy by not generating their own heat. “If you take a reptile and mammal of the same size, the mammal needs 10 times more energy than the reptile does,” Smith said.
The biggest animals on the planet are all herbivores. This means they get their energy from plants, which get their energy from the sun. To eat enough plants to get really big, an herbivore needs a huge area of land, Smith said. Each individual Paraceratherium needed so much space that it would have to travel long distances to find a mate.
But really big herbivores risk generating too much heat. These animals have to break down lots of tough plant material. Bacteria in their guts break down the plant material and give the mammal the energy it needs. (Bacteria are living things with a single cell that live nearly everywhere on Earth.) But this process also creates heat. If the mammal gets too hot, it will die. So, it has to release that extra heat. But how?
Body modifications can help. African elephants have huge ears. Elephants can even wave their ears back and forth, creating their own breeze to whisk the heat away. They also have very little hair, so heat doesn’t get trapped close to their skin.
There are other reasons why being big is not practical. Monstrous size also means monster appetites.
In “Turning Red,” Mei turns into a giant red panda. Real red pandas are only about as heavy as a cat and live in trees. “There’s no way [a huge red panda] could sit and eat bamboo or whatever. It would starve to death,” Smith said. “Unless it’s sneaking hamburgers on the side.”
Heat limits small mammals, too. The smallest animals can’t get smaller than about 1.8 grams (0.06 ounces), which is as heavy as a penny.
One of the smallest mammals in the world is the Kitti’s hog-nosed bat, or the bumblebee bat. Tiny mammals like this cannot keep enough heat in. They constantly lose heat to the air. Keeping up their body temperature requires a lot of energy. “When you start getting sizes that small, you have to continually eat to be able to feed your body,” Smith said.
What can't mammals get any larger than they currently are?
Why do really big herbivores risk generating too much heat?
Why can't the smallest mammals get smaller than about 1.8 grams?
Which sentence from the article supports the main idea of the article?
Read the paragraph from the article.
In Turning Red, Mei turns into a giant red panda. Real red pandas are only about as heavy as a cat and live in trees. “There’s no way [a huge red panda] could sit and eat bamboo or whatever. It would starve to death,” Smith said. “Unless it’s sneaking hamburgers on the side.”
Select the sentence that summarizes the paragraph.
What effect does bacteria have on herbivores?
According to the article, how do elephants’ ears help them?
By The Washington Post, adapted by Newsela staff
Summer is coming, and soon beaches will be full of the sounds of people having fun: splashing in waves and playing in the sand.
But imagine finding a quieter spot of ocean. If you could stick your ears under the water, you might hear other sounds. And many of those sounds are made by fish.
People have known that fish make sounds since ancient Greece; that is why they gave some fish names like red drum, pig fish or croaker. "They're based on the sounds these fish make," said Audrey Looby. She studies fish sounds at the University of Florida.
So far, about 1,000 fish species have been recorded making sounds. (A species is a group of similar living things that can mate and reproduce to make offspring.) Looby’s favorite-sounding fish is the Gulf toadfish. It makes an amazing sound like a boat whistle. Scientists think that thousands of more fish species probably make sounds, too.
People make sounds when they use air from their lungs to vibrate their vocal cords. The vocal cords sit in the voice box, or larynx. You can feel it as a bony lump in the front of your throat. If you hum and put your hand to your throat, you can feel it vibrate.
Birds also all make sounds in the same way, by using a special type of voice box. But fish are different. They make sounds in many different ways. Basically, they use whatever way is easiest for them, Looby said.
Fish do not have vocal cords or larynxes. One of the most common ways they can make sounds is by rubbing different hard body parts together. For example, some fish can make sounds by clicking their teeth together. They can also rub their fins against their bodies to make cricket-like sounds, said Looby.
Many other fish make sounds using their swim bladders. A swim bladder is a gas-filled sac inside their bodies. It is like a balloon filled with air. It helps a fish float in the water. Some fish have a special muscle attached to the swim bladder. They can use this muscle to drum against the bladder to make sounds.
Scientists are not sure how many fish make sounds. Some think that it might be as many as 22,000 types. This is about two-thirds of the 34,000 fish species known. And those are just the sounds fish make on purpose. Fish will make sounds to call to mates or to let other fish know they are in trouble. They also will make sounds to say "this is my area of the reef, listen to how tough I sound so why don't you just swim away," Looby said. A reef is a strip of rock, sand or coral close to the surface of the ocean.
Fish sounds are important because they give a lot of information about what is going on to other fish — and to scientists. If a scientist hears a fish chewing, then they know there is food available. The mating and warning noises of certain fish species give information, too. They can tell scientists how many fish are living on a reef and where they are located.
And fish sounds can tell where the endangered species are located, too, said Looby. An endangered species is one that has so few living members that it is in danger of disappearing forever.
Fish sounds might even help preserve and bring back habitats. A habitat is the natural environment of a living thing. For example, scientists want to try playing healthy reef sounds in a reef that is dying. The healthy sounds might encourage fish to return and live in the dying reef. Learning about fish sounds lets us learn about underwater environments and hopefully manage them at the same time, Looby said.
Why did ancient Greeks give some fish names like red drum, pig fish, or croaker?
How do some fish make sounds using their swim bladders?
How can fish sounds help scientists with endangered species?
What is the relationship between how birds make sounds and how fish make sounds?
According to the section “Fish Make Sounds In Different Ways,” how do fish make cricket-like sounds?
Read the following selection from the article’s Introduction [paragraphs 1-4].
But imagine finding a quieter spot of ocean. If you could stick your ears under the water, you might hear other sounds.
What is the meaning of the word "imagine" as it is used in the selection?
Read the following selection from the section "How Fish Use Sounds."
A habitat is the natural environment of a living thing. For example, scientists want to try playing healthy reef sounds in a reef that is dying. The healthy sounds might encourage fish to return and live in the dying reef.
Which word from the selection helps the reader to understand the meaning of "habitat"?