## 2 Young Students' Misconceptions and Problems Related to Animals  
Children develop an interest in animals from infancy, acquiring some knowledge even before attending school. For many, however, their primary source of information is their pets, as these are often the only animals they encounter directly [18]. Additionally, children residing in urban areas have fewer opportunities to explore nature, leading to limited knowledge, reduced environmental stimuli, and diminished positive environmental attitudes compared to their rural counterparts [4]. School plays a crucial role in broadening this knowledge and elucidating the importance of animals in both nature and human life. Nevertheless, young students often harbor a multitude of wrong ideas and misconceptions about animals, influenced by factors such as age, gender, cultural background, traditions, academic qualifications, and ecological literacy [19]. They also receive incorrect or incomplete information from sources such as fables and tales [2]. Media sources contribute to these misconceptions by not always providing accurate scientific explanations [3]. Storybooks that anthropomorphize animals further complicate the situation, making it difficult for children to generalize knowledge from these stories to real animals [1]. Students tend to be more aware of mammals compared to other types of animals, indicating a limited understanding of the full diversity of the animal kingdom [20]. Children often struggle with classifying animals, frequently misidentifying mammals and other species due to a limited understanding of biological concepts. Their ideas about animal classification are often based on stereotypes regarding their eating habits or the danger they present to humans [5]. Preschool children, in particular, often misclassify animals on the basis of their ideas rather than on the basis of accepted scientific criteria. They even tend to randomly choose the species an animal belongs to without clear patterns or reasons [6]. In fact, children create mental models to categorize animals based on their most striking anatomical features, such as whether they fly, live in water or on land, and do not focus on details or the habitat in which they live [21; 22]. For example, a significant number of children in a study mistook a flying squirrel for a bird [23]. Furthermore, children have incorrect ideas about how different animals are related to each other and how they are grouped. Many students struggle to understand that some animals with seemingly common characteristics or qualities may belong to entirely different species (e.g., insects and birds) or, conversely, find it difficult to grasp that some animals, despite having completely different characteristics, may belong to the same species (e.g., cats and whales) [24]. Children up to the age of ten often misclassify invertebrates, mistakenly believing they have internal skeletons, and generally lack knowledge about invertebrates due to fewer experiences with these animals compared to vertebrates [25]. Reproduction methods and how the offspring are raised also pose significant challenges. For instance, many seventh-grade students believe that small animals reproduce only by laying eggs, that only land mammals give birth to live young (ignoring aquatic mammals), and that the development of young animals always occurs outside the mother's body, not realizing that in many species, development happens inside the mother's body until birth. Another misconception is that animals with fewer offspring are the only ones that care for their young. Some students incorrectly believe that only mammals feed their young, not understanding that some non-mammalian species also have unique ways of feeding their young [3]. Moreover, many children and even adults harbor negative perceptions of unpopular animals, believing them to be inherently dangerous, unprovoked attackers, dirty, disease carriers, and devoid of any beneficial roles in nature, leading to fear and avoidance.