Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘When physicians and veterinarians team up, all species benefit’

taking a camel tracheal sample

Dromedary camels can carry the MERS coronavirus, which can infect humans. Here, veterinarians take a sample of fluid from the animal’s windpipe. They are trying to better understand how the virus is transmitted from camels to humans.

Courtesy of U. Wernery

By Science News Explores

To accompany feature “When physicians and veterinarians team up, all species benefit”

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1.  What is the difference between a physician and a veterinarian? What type of schooling do each of these professions require?

2.  Name three diseases that can trouble both people and an animal species.

During Reading:

1.  List three species of animals (other than humans) that cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz has worked with.

2.  Why did veterinarians at the Denver Zoo reach out to Ilana Kutinsky?

3.  What percentage of gorillas have heart disease or die from the disease?

4.  What effect does scarred heart muscle have on an ape?

5.  How do the viruses that David Curiel’s team builds work to treat cancer?

6.  Why did Pretty receive injections of a virus?

7.  What evidence was there that Pretty’s immune system was primed to fight cancer?

8.  What is MERS CoV? In what part of the world did it first show up?

9.  Why did Ulrich Wernery collect blood from camels?

10.  What age group of camels spreads MERS and why?

After Reading:

1.  Training for physicians and veterinarians typically does not have the two types of students work together. But should these two professions receive training together? Explain your answer using evidence from the story.

2.  Why might veterinarians be involved in research about where the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic originated?