The Way I See It

Biology this year has been a truly unique experience and for it I count my blessings. Count them one by one, as they come flying in through the window fluttering then falling towards my feet. My eyes are not mine anymore but something filled with new wonder and knowledge and once mundane sights do not go unnoticed now. Such as when I stand to fill a glass of water from my fridge I cannot help but look at the piece of "Irish Moss"  sitting in the pot. And it always looks so dry and I remember "swimming sperm" and I pour that poor Irish man some water.

                Other times I think of the angler fish and other terrifying deep sea creature and I wonder what I would see if I could see what I`m not seeing! If I could only take in all the complex layers of horrors that lie just beyond my range of sight. I would be terrified! I would much rather face anything from space before I find out what at the bottom of our own ocean. And I`m not sure what I is about Jellyfish but I`ve become oddly mesmerized by them this semester and now I know that if there is ever a thin, semantic line that lies between beautiful and weird, that line would be covered in Jellyfish.

                I don’t see pollen anymore, I see flying sperm. And the small craft cones now suddenly look very feminine with lips and sweet voices. I would have never thought the very things I covered in glitter at the age of 8 would be female. I look at plants with a new found wonder, they`re deadly like much of the world but beautiful like everything else as well. And everything can be questioned. Be curious and ask questions. Even if you lie in bed one day and forget all that’s true in the world. Even if the stars look like mysterious lights overhead while you pretend to sleep and even if you`ve convinced yourself that the moon is just a collective hallucination shared by millions. Ask questions. Because when all is said and done you may choose to not be certain of anything at all and if that’s the case then you just have to be passionately curious about the world around you.

                I look at the world with awe. It`s beautiful and it`s beauty radiates everywhere. And although we all know the inevitable and that somewhere over the rainbow is not a pot of gold but the cold empty void of space, we choose to see its beauty instead of the vast and indifference of space. Because we are immeasurably small in this vast cosmic wonder, but this biology class has made me curious, ask questions, and follow my heart. Because in the end, when it comes to this Earth and all its inhabitants I have to agree with a poet I know when he says that you have to care about the world, because it doesn`t care about you.

~Jessica Thandi (Biology 11 Mrs. Phillips 2013-2014 Semester 1)

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.

Aptostichus bonoi

Okay so I realized I was away for this, so I shall do it now. Now I had a really hard time just picking which celebrity animal to write about because there are ssooooo many to choose from. But being a big U2 fan I had to do them justice and I knew I would feel guilty if I passed up the opportunity to write about Bono's Joshua Tree Trapador Spider. Okay I'll admit it, I mostly picked it just for the name. It's long and ridiculous and names after the bands 1987 album titled The Joshua Tree.

 

The spider on the other hand is a nocturnal arhropod that seizes it's prey by leaping out of their burrows and injecting them with venom. The species is an endangered species and is on the conservation status.

Photo Journal

We went out one day in groups and in the freezing cold to go look at plants. The following is what we found.

Mosses:

Found infront of school

 

 



We found this moss in a shady area in the front of the school. This makes perfect sense as moss need to live in moist, shady environments to survive. This is because they have swimming sperm! In other words, to reproduce, there constantly needs to be water and water molecules present. If the mosses cannot reproduce then the demise of their species will be short and sweet. Mosses can be found on trees and rocks alike. Yes, rocks! But only if the rock is moist at all times-thats why a lot of moss forms on rocks at beaches and near river and lakes. The reason mosses grow so low to the ground is because they are non-vascular plants. Meaning they do not posses any tubes (xylem and phloem) to carry water and nutrients to the rest of their parts. Because of this, mosses have to be able to directly absord water and nutrients to distribute to all its parts.

Ferns:

Front side of fern


Back side of fern

We found ferns near the creek in a shady and moist environment. Like mosses, ferns also need a moist environment in order to survive, not only to obtain nutrients, but in order to reproduce. When ferns drop their spores, a small heart shaped prothallus is produced and it needs water for its swimming spores to fertilize. Ferns and mosses look very different but share a commen environement. Unlike mosses ferns have evolved to have vasculat tissue. It is this vascular tissue which allows them to grow tall and transport water and nutrients to all needing parts. Also because of this, ferns need an anchor for their roots. Unlike mosses which do not grow tall and instead lay low to the ground, ferns need an anchor to flourish.

Gymnosperms:

left, female cone. right, male cone

Bush of gymnosperms found infront of school.

Unlike the mosses and ferns which are restricted to living within damp environment, gymnosperms have no restrictions. They live in varied environements due to the fact that instead of having spores or swimming sperm, they have seeds. The seeds are protected and can survive harsh conditions to later become active. But there is a difference between pollination and fertilization. Pollination is when the male anther releases pollen grans that land on the female ovulate cone. This leads to fertilization because the pollen grains will start to grow pollen tubes where sperm will be released into. The result is a zygote that will later develope into a gymnosperm.

Angiosperms:

Monocots:

leaves in 3's

parrallel veins

Dicots:

petals in 3's or 4's


branched veins in leaves.

Angiosperms have adapted the best to living on land. They have a waxy coating on their leaves and stomata to help conserve water and the ability to attract pollinators. Such as bees! Bees are pollinators attacted to the taking nectar from flowers. Other flowers use the wind to disperse their seeds in and hopefull the wind will carry them far off. Another tactic used is fruits. The completely edible, colourful and delicious fruits are actually just a means to attract animals to eat them and later poop them out in a new location.

Round Worm Dissection

This is the inside of a round worm, I do not have a picture of the exterier but I remember that the round worm was a male because it had a "hooked" tail. When you cut it open you can see the spaghetti like strings, those are it's testes.



Rat Dissection

On friday we did the rat dissection. The moment in every high schoolers life where the smell of formaldehyde becomes over bearing but curiosity takes over. Or at least for me. Here is a picture of the rat, it was white/yellow in fur colour and had a tail almost 3/4 the length of its body.

Here is it's underbelly where the insision will be made.

You can almost hear the small chitter of it's teeth just by looking at them. It's long whiskers and pink nose are just too adorable!

This rat was a female, you can tell by it's lack of testes. Also look at those long toes!

And the hands, used to help the rat walk and eat.

Cutting through the rat was tough. It has muscles and skin and you can see the layers peeled back. It wasn't easily pinned back either, it put up a real fight.

The rats insides and organs are similar to that of a humans in terms of placement and relative size. It was inteteresting to look at these organs because they were larger than the frogs and more defined with the liver being the largest of them all.

The heart was well protected. Hidden under the diaphram, it was hard to cut through especially the sternum, at points you could even here the poor ladies bones breaking.

 Because of extra time and curiosity my group decided to check out the rats brain. This is the skull which was ridiculously hard to penetrate.

yes we did mush it up a bit, but we tried. Doing this brain surgery gave me a lot of respect for real brain surgens.

And now for easy viewing we pryed the organs out of the rats body to lay them out and label them. You can clearly see the size difference of all the organs now.

 

Finding - a new way of looking at - Nemo

After watching Finding Nemo at the young ripe age of 16 for the 3rd time, I was not inclined to put the effort into watching it again but I did laugh when the teacher Mr. Ray (a manta ray) carries the students away under his belly beacuse it looks a lot this image.

Anyways, yes, after Mrs.Phillips mentioned the idea of looking at Finding Nemo with a new outlook and relating it to biology 11, I feel the need to just stare at this image of a manta ray hugging these women for the rest of my life. This time though, I saw some things that I wouldn't have seen otherwise, such as the flatworm that was swimming around in the background and a seahorse with it's father (because the father gives birth - that seahorse giving birth video was wack!) I also paid more attention to the jellyfish, as we learned about them being cnidarians with no real brain, respiratory system, and circulatory system. I also came up with questions such as "Why does electricity in a jellyfish not course through it and make the top deadly too?" and "What is the ink made out of and what allows it to flow out of the squid?" I could relate this movie to the theme of  Evolution and Natural Selection, because I can see how certain sea animals must have evolved or use these tactics as natural selection. Such as nemo and his father living in a sea anemone, which grants them sancuary and food, while the clownfish cleans the sea anemone. You can also see a trait on the angler fish that helps it to catch prey and for females, to attract a possible mate. The luminescent organ is called an esca. You can also see how sharks are specificaly designed as predators with their rows of teeth and large lumbering bodies and sturdy jaws and then the irony of them being changed to believe "fish are friends, not food"