Although the practice of giving examples is central to the effective teaching and learning of science, it has been the object of little educational research. The present study attends to this issue by systematically examining the exemplification practices of a university professor and his students' learning experiences during a biology lecture on animal behavior. It is reported that the science instructor provided students with a series of procedural, conceptual, and analytical examples. Each type of exemplification was characterized by a unique focus, form and degree of dialogism. These examples promoted student acquisition of specialized scientific language and engagement in varied types of argumentation: inductive reasoning by parallel cases, inductive reasoning by causation, inductive generalization, and deductive reasoning. Furthermore, students' experiences learning from examples were contingent upon their performance of parallel instructional activities such as text reading and note‐taking. Based on these findings, we argue for the importance of promoting student development of exemplification literacy (the ability to critically assess the use of examples in scientific communication) and the need for science instructors to provide students with opportunities not only to learn science concepts through examples but also to learn about the nature of scientific exemplification itself. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53:737–767, 2016