Question 24 A baby animal has a mass of $1 \mathrm{~kg}$ and a surface area of $50 \mathrm{~cm}^{2}$. Its mother has a surface area of 450 $\mathrm{cm}^{2}$. What is her mass? $\mathrm{kg}$

Step 1 ：The problem is asking for the mass of the mother animal given the surface area. The relationship between mass and surface area in animals is often described by the square-cube law, which states that as a shape grows in size, its volume grows faster than its surface area. However, in this case, we are not given any specific relationship between the mass and surface area of the animals. Therefore, we cannot directly calculate the mass of the mother animal from the given information. We need more information to solve this problem.

Step 2 ：Without additional information, we can only make an assumption. If we assume that the baby animal and its mother are similar in shape and density, then the ratio of their masses should be the same as the ratio of their surface areas.

Step 3 ：So, we can set up the following proportion to solve for the mass of the mother animal: \(\frac{mass_{baby}}{mass_{mother}} = \frac{surface area_{baby}}{surface area_{mother}}\)

Step 4 ：Solving this equation for the mass of the mother gives: \(mass_{mother} = mass_{baby} \times \frac{surface area_{mother}}{surface area_{baby}}\)

Step 5 ：Substituting the given values into the equation: mass_baby = 1, surface_area_baby = 50, surface_area_mother = 450, we get mass_mother = 9.0

Step 6 ：Final Answer: The mass of the mother animal is \(\boxed{9}\) kg.