Ignore the poster below. He is just bitter that he's failing. But don't mind him. His dry, soulless husk of a body will soon blow away in the wind, never again to be seen.

The class itself is incredibly easy. The tests only cover ~25% of the actual material taught in lecture, so it is completely up to you to enjoy the depth of the class. If you just hate learning, then gtfo. It's hot here in Royce, and the classroom would be more comfortable without you.

The profesor + TAs are all very friendly. If you have a problem with them, YOU are the douche.

Took Mammalogy with Professor Dines because there was no other class available. It ended up being a very pleasant and interesting class. Dines was very accommodating and offered to drop one of the lecture/lab exams after the class did poorly. The class has 3 lecture exams and 2 lab exams.

Slides are very organized and all the exams are heavy memorization of mammal family names, family details, and sometimes he puts stuff that he mentions in class but not on the slides on the test. Overall lecture exams were chill and if you can memorize details you'll do fine.

Lab was kind of useless and it's mainly self-taught. Best advice would be to take good pictures of the specimens and memorize them well because the lab exams are also straight memorization and the exams are worth 125 points for some ungodly reason so if you bomb a lab exam you're screwed. The exams themselves were very fair and easy though so make sure you take the time to simply memorize the skulls and you'll get free points.

If you can’t dedicate a lot of time to memorizing the slides and every skull in the lab, DO NOT take this class. His tests are tricky, and spelling counts for all of the scientific names. He was kind enough to drop our lowest test score and he is a nice person but this class is not an easy A after COVID. Don’t be fooled by the previous comments saying that it’s easy. I’m an A student and I got a B. If you have the time, take this class, if you have other classes, don’t take this class.

The content of this class was fairly interesting and Professor Dines seems like a good guy who has some fun stories. The exams are where I felt this class fell short. There are 3 exams, 2 midterms, and a final that is non-cumulative and the same length and style as the midterms. The exams were nearly entirely memorization based (rather than application) and often included topics from class that the professor mentioned once and barely explained. I went to lectures, took good notes, and studied hard, but I still felt like crap about the final because of how unclearly it was written and how obscure some of the topics were. It felt like even with a good understanding of the topics of the class, you could never be fully prepared for the exams unless you studied every single word or example that was discussed during lectures (and sometimes weren't even on the slides). I was able to get away with decent scores on the tests by writing as much as I could about my general knowledge of the concepts even if I forgot (or had never even heard of) the specific detail that the question asked for, but it was incredibly frustrating and constantly had me worried about my grade.

This class is hard, since they make you memorize the taxonomy and characteristics of most of mammalian animals. This is a very memorization-heavy class, but it may give you just enough background information to go into researching animal physiology and evolution, as in you might learn some useful information for other EEB classes.
The lectures are recorded and dense in material. The tests are difficult but mainly on memorization. The labs involve real animal bones and skins, and it is expected to memorize and be able to recognize each animal's skulls. The practical exams for lab are timed and involve rotating through stations where skulls are placed. You must be able to recognize them and identify the animal by its taxonomic classification without moving the skulls around.

Professor Dines is a very nice and personable instructor that has a clear passion for Marine Mammology. I would recommend taking this class if you have an interest in learning about marine mammals or are looking for an interesting upper div unit. While I wouldn't necessarily call this class an "easy A", if you watch the lectures (in person or recorded on Zoom) and take good notes on his slides there is a pretty straightforward path to success in this class.

Class Structure:
There are 3 lecture exams (two during weeks 1-10, and one during finals week) as well as one 8-9 page research paper (on a topic of your choosing) for the class. This may seem like a lot, however, the paper was graded relatively easily (avg was an A/A-) and the exams were non-cumulative (mostly short-answer with some multiple choice) and pretty straightforward as long as you took good notes on his lecture slides. The avg for the exams was usually A-/B+. For discussion, there are weekly research papers to read and leave annotations on which you would get full credit for as long as you completed them.

*Note: At the time of this review this class was only offered for letter grade and not for P/NP*

Really interesting class if you're into 1) evolution and the nitty-gritty of how vertebrates came to be how they are etc and 2) like dissections, but being a 6 unit class, very content-heavy. You're basically taking two classes in one, with there being exams that center on lecture content (more short answers/showing you understand the material) and lab exams (more memorization and identification of muscles, organs, etc). All the dates and expectations are laid out for you in the beginning, Dines is a very helpful and funny guy, and the TAs (at least this quarter) are a heaven-send for lab. Go to TA office hours!!

That being said, tough class, you have to cram a lot of knowledge into your head and start studying earlier than you think. Most of us including me probably underestimated the first lecture and lab exams and got low scores (borderline fail for me on the first lab exam), but Dines and the TAs do give opportunities for extra credit in the form of a museum trip and filling out the evals. I also learned from how badly I prepared for the first lecture and lab exams and improved from there.

TLDR: tough but rewarding and interesting class, just start studying and preparing earlier than you think, as well as asking questions. also lean on each other as students/ask questions in lab esp. - like in HSM, we're all in this together