Singing about phylogeny

My friend mdvlist sent me the link to some rather odd educational materials, called "Lyrical Life Science." They're folk songs set to familiar tunes, but the lyrics are all biology. I realize that folk songs about science have a storied history. But these are kinda weird - like "Sirenians" set to "Drunken Sailor," or "Oh Bacteria" set to "Oh Susanna" ("though lacking any nucleus, you do have a cell wall. . . ")

mdvlist claims that the kids in her party LOVED these CDs, although she was not impressed by the quality of the music. Nor was I - in fact, I couldn't understand half of what they are saying in the sample clips, and I know all these terms already! Can kids really follow

Protozoa
to the tune of "Listen to the Mockingbird"

How they move is how you know
Into which group they will go
Here are four groups with some examples
So you'll understand how they are classified

Chorus:
Protozoa, also called protista,
They're microscopic and are single-celled
Protozoa, also called protista
They're microscopic and are single-celled

Amoebas are a sarcodine
Pseudopods to move are seen
False feet arrange the shape to change
And remember that the sarcodines are called
Chorus

All around the paramecia
You can see some moving cilia
Tiny hairs are wiggling there
And remember that the ciliates are called
Chorus...

Without getting it all hopelessly garbled? Will it end up sounding like nonsense to them? Who knows. But I probably shouldn't criticize anything that gets kids thinking about biology. After all, I learned about monotremes from They Might Be Giants' "Mammal:"

Placental the sister of
Her brother marsupial
Their cousin called monotreme
Dead uncle allotheria. . .

I used to play this song, with its long list of various types of mammals, in my biology classes because it illustrates how Mammalia, a relatively small phylogenetic group, recieves a disproportionate amount of human beings' attention. Most of the living animals kids think of are, in fact, mammals (mostly placental) - even though mammals constitute only about 5,400 of the 1.8 million or so named species (there are three times as many species of marine fish as mammals, and twice as many birds as mammals).

There is a boo boo in this amateur video, near the end - did you catch it? It shows how easy it is to mishear a lyric, even when it's relatively clearly phrased.