March Mammal Madness
March Mammal Madness is an annual scientific outreach tournament consisting of simulated combat competition among animals, informed by scientific literature and communicated through creative storytelling and art. This collection consists of related publications, presentation, and educational materials. Accompanying data is available in the March Mammal Madness Data Collection, and official tournament information at the March Mammal Madness Library Guide.
Image attribution: (A) cheetah by Charon Henning; (B) Tag Team Mutualists warthog and mongoose by Mary Casillas; (C) Thylacine by Olivia Pellicer; (D) red squirrel by Charon Henning; (E) honey badger by Charon Henning; (F) moose by Valeria Pellicer; (G) spotted hyena by Charon Henning; (H) coyote by Mary Cassilas; (I) Andrewsarchus mongoliensis by Charon Henning.
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- Creators: Schuttler, Stephanie
- Creators: Nickley, William
- Creators: Lewton, Kristi L
Public engagement is increasingly viewed as an important pillar of scientific scholarship. For early career and established scholars, however, navigating the mosaic landscape of public education and science communication, noted for rapid “ecological” succession, can be daunting. Moreover, academics are characterized by diverse skills, motivations, values, positionalities, and temperaments that may differentially incline individuals to particular public translation activities.
‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.
Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’
‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.
Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’
This item includes:
1) The official bracket files for the 2022 MMM tournament
2) A screen-reader enabled bracket file
3) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in English
4) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in Spanish
5) March Mammal Madness, Middle School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks
6) March Mammal Madness, High School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks
This packet includes:
Pro-Tips for Educators
MMM Intro to the Tournament Slide Deck
The MMM Team Booklet (2013-2022)
Life Sciences Research the Contenders Lesson Plan
Life Sciences Tournament Events Lesson Plan
Life Sciences Tournament Worksheets
Visual Arts Tumbling Blocks Lesson
Language Arts HAIKU Lesson
Science Writing – Should Have Been the Champion Lesson Plan
4th Grade Science and Writing Lesson Plan
MMM Guide for the Younger Crowd (K-5)
10th Annual MMM Festival Flyer
Since 2018, MMM team members have written sport-style summaries following the live "play-by-play" narration of simulated combatant encounters on social media. These summaries, highlighting key adaptations, human impacts, and other scholarly information, have been provided to educators to describe tournament outcomes to their learners who do not follow the battle narrations "live" on social media.
March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.
This packet includes:
2021 Bracket Common Name
2021 Bracket Latin Binomial
Bracket FAQ (English)
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (English)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (English)
Visual Arts Lesson Plan (English)
Language Arts Lesson Plan (English)
Guide for Youngest Players (English)
JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (English)
2021 Bracket Common Name (Spanish)
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (Spanish)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (Spanish)
Visual Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish)
Language Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish)
JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (Spanish)