Second Final Question

In biology 11 we were encouraged to find things that interested us. To search the vast and inescapable internet to find the most bizarre plants, animals, and mico organisms out there. Here is a collection of some of my favourites.

The Strangler Fig:

This species of fig tree made me look at tress a bit differently than before. Trees always brought my serenity and they seamed so peaceful, old, and slow. But this tree. This stangler fig is ruthless and mean. Completely draining the host tree of all nutriets - even sunlight!- it creates and slow and aganizing death for the host. Trees don't deserve to go out like that.
http://www.jessicatootsie.blogspot.ca/2013/12/death-by-tree.html

Cnidarians:

Jellyfish had always intruged me and now I know about their feeding/digestion, circulation, respiration, reproduction, and nervous system. This phylum also contains sea anemones and some other 10000 animals , but arent jellyfish the most fun?
http://www.jessicatootsie.blogspot.ca/2013/12/cnidarians.html

Snails and Flowers!
I also learned about rare new species of transparent snails and on a related note about how snail poop can be used to make really cool materials. Also the exsistence of skulls in flowers? nah, just a saying, since when a snap dragon dies the seed it leaves behind creepingly resembles that of a skull.

And lastly... The Tardigrades!


This beloved microscopic moss piglet speaks for itself. Being a polyextremophile, it can withstand temperatures as low as abolute zero, as high as 300 degrees farenheigh, exposed to lethal doses of radiation and still comes out alive and well. It is the only know animal known to be able to withstand the vaccum of space. For obviouse reasons, this is my favourite blog post because I learned about the coolest little critter that I would never have learned about before. I also learned about the hypothesis of panspermia. Where an organism that can withstand the vaccum of space is ejected of the Earth onto aother planet to kick start the process of evolution there.
But what do these little water bears do? With the ability to withstand such extreme conditions they must have some sort of purpose. Ah, but they don't you see. They spend all their time sucking water off of moss. Obviously the tardigrade was not born with the ability to survive these harsh conditions and they are likely the result of many generations of natural selection. One explanation is that the tardigrade had a mutation that made it more capable to withstand harsh conditions and improved it's chances to reproduce and pass the adaption to it's offspring. But the tardigrade does live in some harsh conditions such as the himilayans, hot springs, ice sheets, and ocean sediments. These places where compitition is low an animal would be able have an oppourtunity to claim a uniqe niche, but it would require years of special adaptations selected over millions of generations to be where it is now.