Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Oh The Joys of Invertebrates.

Today was arthropod lab day in my inverts class, which made me very happy because it meant I got to spend an hour with my favourite arachnid the scorpions!

Isn't he cute! Okay, maybe not cute, but they are sweethearts. This little guy tried to climb up my sleeve and sleep. Needless to say we were buddies for the day. Time for a "The more you know" moment, did you know that scorpions fluoresce under a black light? No, well, they do!


See! Scorpions fluoresce due to compounds found in their exoskeletons, and that is how you can find them in "the wild", or if they get out of their container and you have to tear the lab apart to find them. The little guys in the picture are the younger ones that haven't been "socialized", they really don't like being picked up and held yet. Eventually though, they will, and they'll be wanting to "snuggle" (I'm pretty sure you can only properly snuggle with mammals, but anyway) just as much as their older siblings.

This past week I also got to spend some time in the greenhouse on campus, and here a
re some of the pictures from that. I experimented with some macro work, and I'm not confident that it's "good" by any means.













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