The Vertebrates Song Lyrics

Do you have a backbone? That’s weird

Ninety-five percent of earth life does not

You’re called a vertebrate because of the spine you’ve got

There are five vertebrate classes

Some have warm blood and some have cold

Some on land, in the air or sea

What are they called? Repeat after me:

Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish

Hedgehog:

Most mammals don’t come in eggs like all the others

The babies drink milk from their mothers

And we all have fur or hair on our soft skin

We have cats, deer, platypus, kangaroos, and you

Fun fact: whales and bats are mammals, too

Turtle:

Reptiles are covered in scales or bony plates

Yeah, we know you can’t relate

We lay eggs with a leathery shell

We have snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, as well

Toucan:

Birds are born from hard-shelled eggs

We have beaks and feathers, but scales on our legs

Not all of us take to the sky

But most of us have hollow bones and most of us fly

Frog:

Amphibians lead a double-life in cold blood

Our metamorphosis takes us from the water to the mud

We start with gills, then we graduate to lungs

Some of us catch food with our specialized tongues

Some of us look like worms, and some of us are long

And some of us are toads, but most of us are frogs

Shark:

Fish, fish, fish are the largest groups of vertebrates

And we’ve been around much longer

We have scales and fins, we’re ectothermic

And we lay our eggs in the water

And guess what: a jellyfish is not a fish cause it doesn’t have a backbone…

Same with starfish, shellfish, cuttlefish, and crayfish. These are fake fish

Ok, I’m done... But they’re fake

There are so many ways to divide up the data

But we all have spines in subphylum Vertebrata (subphylum Vertebrata! subphylum Vertebrata!)

Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish (Shark: but only the real ones!)

Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish

Bird, Amphibians, and fish