The looks on the majority of my classmates faces matched mine five minutes into class. Deer in the headlights, as we were asked to singlehandedly answer questions about two articles that (although we were supposed to) we did not read. After I turned in my blank sheet of paper, we were allowed to pull out our iPad and actually go over the articles. The first of the two we learned how scientists used DNA sequencing to not only learn how the mimic octopus came to be able to mimic so well, but also inversely proved Darwin’s theory of evolution. They did this by seeing what genes and amino acids and sequences allowed 36 other species of octopus to do similar things, and compared it to the sequencing of the mimic octopus. With the comparison they can physically see what genes are selectively stronger or better for survival. (Cool fact: the top layer of the octopus’ skin is transparent, and the cells beneath are able to shift and move layers in order to show differrent colors.) And we felt that the methodology was pretty solid, contrarily to the methodology of the second article. The second article discussed the effects of ecotourism on great white. This experiment had questionable methodology though. There were to many variables, no true controls, and it only tested for two behaviours that did not truly measure the effects of ecotourism. Essentially it didnt prove anything…although they did quite an excellent job of saying, this doesn’t prove anything, that doesn’t justify a poorly done pointless experiment. Regardless, shortly after we dissected both the perch and dogfish shark(which to my dismay looked nothing like a dog) we of course will finish is dissection tomorrow, as it is quite complex. Well I’m off to read my articles… *sigh*
what a dogfish shark really should look like…
