Comments about Vid's on Mr. H's Blog

After last week when we all posted videos, I watched the videos that Mr. H had put up on his as great examples. My favourite three were: 1. CRAZY Pheromone Bee Dude - Catherine, 2. Snow Geese Migration - Miles, and 3. A Wife & A Mistress - Sam.

I went onto the blog and clicked on Catherine's to begin with and was shocked, amazed and flabbergasted to see all those bees! The Crazy Bee Dude covers himself with a mix of pheromones that attract the bees, but not to sting. He is covered with 100,000 bees on average at a time. All those bees start to weigh a great deal and produce large amounts of heat from their tiny little bodies so he can't stand there long with them. All he does to get out from the bee suit is shake his body and they fly off WITHOUT stinging him. Can you say CRAZY?!?!?

I watched a few more and then came to watch the Snow Geese Migration Video and thought that it would be boring, but when I heard that the number of Geese that travel is 5 million, I was shocked! 5 million birds travel each year in the Spring from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Arctic Tundra's then back again when Winter comes just to stay alive. They travel a huge 3,000 miles over 3 months to get to each place. So really, in a year, they travel for 6 months and live in each place for only 3... Not my kind of deal!

The last I watched was the Pied Flycatcher Bird video. It started off with the cute little bird singing his song and then finding a girl and showing her the little box he chose in the forest and they fall madly in love! Then, unknown to the wife, Mr. Bird flies off to impress another lady bird and show her this other stylish box he has found and then when the mistress lays her eggs, he flies back home to his wife. He knows that now the chicks from his wife have hatched and he must be the ideal father. When the mistress' chicks hatch she must care for them all by herself because the Mr. Bird is back with his wife and isn't coming back. While one family is thriving the other is deprived and dying. Lo and behold in the end, wily Mr. Bird gets the pleasure of fathering five chicks with his wife and having two surviving from the mistress. I didn't think birds could be so mischievous and sneaky, but at the same time good and protective over one nest. You would think they would just leave all the women to fend for themselves, but no, they know how to work the system!

Just for fun!

My sister's name is Laura so this is kinda funny! Just released in Australia a few weeks ago.... Enjoy

Week 3 Blog

Migration

Courtship

Classical Conditioning

Camouflage

This week in Bio we learned about an array of things but the one that I thought was really cool was the way an organism could camouflage itself into it's environment.

The camouflage gives the organism the stealth factor as Mr. H put it! Camouflage is when something can blend into it's surroundings or make itself look like something it isn't. This helps to protect and defend the organism from predators. For example some larvae of certain moths are colored to look exactly like a bird dropping when the moths lay the eggs in the habitat. This super cool adaptation that the moth has made provides the larvae to grow without being someone else's dinner before the larvae even gets a chance to live. This moth is not

the only organism that can use camouflage to protect itself.

The Giant Stick Insect can take on the appearance of its surrounding to protect itself from being eaten. It blends right in with it's surroundings and they can be extremely difficult to spot when out on a hike which is exactly what they want to happen because if it is hard for a h

uman to spot them then their predator will have just as hard or an even harder time trying to find them.

Many other organisms can do the same thing for protection in their habitat and uses these characteristics as a defense mechanism against other predators. As the prey they fight to survive and evolve to have special characteristics that help it to survive and protect its self.

Picture of Moth from ttp://gocb.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/moth-on-mayapple-that-looks-like-bird-poop-july-11-2008/

Picture of Giant Stick Insects taken at Wildlife World, Darling Harbor Australia by Emma

Week 1 of Bio

This past week we learnt about relationships between organisms and what effect they had on each other. There were two that really stood out to me: the relationship between Follicle Mites and Humans, the Cortyceps Fungus and insects.

So, on the eyelashes of any human right now, there are Follicle Mites. These microscopic mites are attracted to the sebaceaus gland behind the eyelash, an yummy and warm environment for the mite to live. They get on you and then burrow into your eyelash follicle and make it their home. They only live for a day or so and do no harm to humans. This was an example of commensalism.

The Cortyceps Fungus was really cool! It is a fungus that has many different types, each pertaining to only one type of insects. It gets into the body of the insect and slowly kills it from the inside out, first attacking the nervous system. Insects obviously die from the relationship but the Cortyceps Fungus shoots out new heads of the plant throughout the dead insects body and use the body as a starting point as a new farm. The deadly fungus to insects actually keeps the numbers of the population down keeping it in balance with the surroundings as to not have too many of one insect, which would then throw off the scale. It is so highly deadly that even if some insect groups smell it they will be the fungi's next prey. Ants who get the fungus are first paralyzed and as soon as another worker ant sees them under the influence of the fungus they carry them far away from the colony in attempt to protect the others. Where Cortyceps Fungus benefits and the insect doesn't (and even dies) a Parasitic Relationship is occurring.

The relationships and the way these organisms use something else to keep them alive is quite fascinating to me and I can't wait to learn what we talk about this week! Until then, Happy Biology learning!

Quote of the week: "That fly is a wanna-BEE" haha

From Mr. Hillegass' whiteboard on Tues. 8th Sept