A new family of animals

This is a relatively diverse family, with big differences in colour and size. The genera can be separated by close observation, but this is not usually convenient  to manage. The species can only be identified by experts and connoisseurs. The animals in this family are highly structured in their habits, and these differ throughout the year. The juvenile animals go into hibernation during the winter, while the adult ones simply change habits.

These animals change morphologically throughout the year, with different anterior and/or posterior protrusions marking the different stages. The stages differ from species to species and according to environmental factors. An animal can sometimes revert to a previous stage during a season.

The mating protrusion varies between species, but during the laying of the eggs, the animal devours all available food in its territory. This is necessary to make many large eggs, which are lain uniformly distributed on the whole of the animal's territory at the end of july and the beginning of august in places with clearly defined seasons, but this can vary according to geographical position. After a while, the animal gathers the eggs, which can vary in colour - some observed colours are green, grey, white, and black - in highly structured collections. The eggs are short cylindrical, and are lain on their side. They are not incubated, and hatch evenly throughout the winter, seldom any two at the same time from the same batch. The young animal is small, and therefore goes into hibernation until it is sexually mature, which takes about five years. Relatively few animals survive their first and second winter, usually due to hunger or neglect.

These animals are hermaphroditic, and most of them, when it is too far from the closest individual of the same species, uses self-fertilisation. The complications of this are insignificant for the animal's health. The adult's winter morphology includes an anterior mouth part which is used to eat or move snow, which is its main food during the winter. Some species can have a posterior protrusion for the dispersal of excrement or for camouflaging its trails.

These animals have in recent times been bred to need regular interaction with humans, which is why wild specimens of this family are rare. They are kept as domestic animals. It is unusual that one family owns more than three, as they can be demanding and need large territories with a lot of available food. They are herbivores during the egg-laying, but at other times they can eat humus (especially in the spring and autumn) or snow (during the winter season). Some examples of genera are John Deere and Kubota.


As you can understand, I have been brainwashed this summer...

So many names!

It started off with floristics, also known as botany (or just plants). I learnt that loads of plants belonged to the rose family, and I learnt a LOT of names of plants and flowers. I would work approximately from nine in the morning till half past eleven in the evening, but of course with breaks during the day. It's a lot to learn in a short amount of time, so I spent a lot of time testing myself and memorizing names.

After four bad days for the people with pollen allergy, we moved on to marine life, and therefore on to faunistics, zoology, or animals, whatever you want to call it. The first day, I studied plankton through a stereo loupe - it was very interesting to see the animals that live floating around haphazardly in the seawater. They have really interesting shapes, and are really tiny. The I moved on to naming the species of live material fished (or scraped) up by the students who were on the research boat that day. I saw, among loads of other things, red sea cucumbers, hermit crabs, and loads of worms.

Look closely at the pilot whale to the left,
and you can see her grey calf beside her 

The next day it was my turn to go aboard the boat. We were really lucky to see loads of pilot whales (they said there were at least a hundred). They were beautiful and cute - and quite large. They had followed schools of fish into the fjord, and according to the people on the ship, they would stay there the whole summer, feeding on fish and having a good time. I saw large males, females and mothers with calves. It was wonderful to see them swimming so close to the boat.

After another day with naming species and then a trip to the beach at low tide, we moved on to terrestrial animals. In other words, insects (and, of course, many other things that live on land). Loads and loads of flies, and one of my favourite groups, the weevils, or snout beetles. We took walks to capture animals in nets (like butterfly nets). Again, there were a lot of names to learn.

Everyone talked about a steep learning curve, and it really was. It was fun, but tiring, with loads of late nights with early mornings following them. Now I can name loads more of the living things I see around me in nature. Going for walks with me will be impossible, since I will most likely stop all the time to study some living thing (and hopefully name it correctly).

Naming nature

I am beginning to feel the effects of the flora and fauna course I am taking. I can't look at a patch of moss without wondering which moss it is, and I want to know the names of all the birds I see. As spring is coming on and nature wakes up, I become more and more interested in it.

Common Goldeneye pair

The last couple of weeks, as I have looked out of my window while eating breakfast, I have seen some black and white ducks on the river. They would dive suddenly and come up again like a floatation device.  It was nice to have the company on the dreary mornings, but I wanted more. I wanted to label them. Today, I walked home from University and saw them closer up. I found out what they were, finally: Common Goldeneye - or in Norwegian, Kvinand.

Somehow, knowing this doesn't destroy the joy and magic of nature. I will still love having them for company in the mornings, maybe even more, because now that I have a name for them, they'll almost be like friends.

Learning these things about nature - not only the names of things, but also the internal and external structure of plants and animals, their life cycles, their preferred food and their habitat - makes me appreciate nature that I see all around me all the more. Now that I know a little bit of how amazing it is, I can be awestruck every time I see a patch of moss or a little sparrow. I think that is wonderful. I am looking very much forward to the spring coming for real and seeing nature alive and vibrant again.

Torture

I almost cried, yes. Ow.

It is amazing how our bodies react to pain or the anticipation of pain. I often hold my breath if I know something is coming. This can be quite inconvenient if you, like me, have a sensitive scalp, and you volunteer to sit and let your hair be yanked in all directions hour after hour. At the end of the day I wondered why I was so immensely tired. After a couple of days being really tired, I finally figured out that it probably had something to do with the constant pain I had been experiencing in intervals the past couple of days. Nothing bad about the hairdresser - she is trying her best. But it is, of course, difficult to put long hair into rollers without hurting a very sensitive scalp like mine.

I find that pain drains my energy and ability to concentrate or even think straight. No wonder I got depressed when I had constant pain so intense I couldn't think - for two weeks. I am surprised I didn't go insane! So, to humans (at least me), pain is debilitating. You can't function properly. For example, when I broke my arm (as you have probably guessed, especially when I tell you that the constant pain and the arm-breaking were separate, I am quite accident-prone), I couldn't walk much. It is a bit strange, but I guess that's how we are built.

Animals are often better than humans at tackling pain. They have other priorities, I guess. Whereas pain puts us (at least normal people) out of control of some of our body functions and sometimes creates bad reception for our thoughts, some animals can run with a broken leg or act normal when injured if it is necessary. But then, maybe it's just never that necessary (like life or death) for the modern human to have to control pain that way. I don't know.

But I do know that I have found the most effective way to torture me - yank at my hair. Or maybe just make me feel pain at irregular intervals and watch how eventually my brain and body will have too little oxygen and I will slowly but surely stop being able to form complete thoughts and descend into depression and even madness...

It is uncomfortable to think about these things in our comfortable world. But remember, people are being tortured right now. Maybe not exactly as above, but yes, torture. And it is just HORRIBLE. So I had a tiny, mild experience of the suffering this can cause (extremely teensy-weensy), and I don't like to think of it escalated. NOT AT ALL. We should all stand up for human rights and end the use of torture, NOW. Amnesty international says that torture is still prevalent in a lot of countries in the world, and you can help them in their work to uphold human rights by for example donating money. Human rights need to be defended. We can't just sit back and think that everything will turn out alright in the end, because no one really cares about your opinions and convictions unless you act on them.

I don't quite know why this blog post turned so serious, but there you are. Serious blog post is serious.

Books read: 48
Pages read: 14243

Weird nature

I am studying biology, and I am just finished with a module about ethology, which is the study of animal behaviour. Within this topic there are several topics, but one of the weirder ones are the ones about social and sexual relations when it comes to mating. Even though monogamy is the rule (at least traditionally, in the western world) among humans, that is definitely not the case among animals (I am going to draw a line of distinction here, because that is comfortable to me. I know that humans are a type of animal, but I decide here). In this topic, I have been introduced to not only monogamy, but polygyny, polyandry, and even polygynandry.

These are different social and sexual structures within populations of animals (and often humans as well). We are all acquainted with monogamy, or rather, as in today's society, serial monogamy. This is quite uncommon among animals, but some birds have this kind of relationship, and one of the reasons is that the care of their young takes a team effort. But then we have the other types of social and sexual relationship styles.

The most familiar of these is polygyny, or polygamy, which it is often called in humans. This is where one male has several female partners. This is quite normal, and in the species who have this, the females are often (but not always) left alone with the care of their young. The opposite arrangement also exists, where one female has several male partners. This is not very common, but in species with reversed gender roles, this can be quite common.

But the REALLY messed up thing in nature is polygynandry. Both females and males have multiple partners, but it's not a 'group sex' type of thing. In the example we studied, there were sophisticated social structures around this. One female had one to three male partners, and each of the males had one to three females total. Then there was the business of rank within the three males who had the one female, and to me, it just looked really complex.

So yeah, nature has a lot of weird things going on. And I haven't even touched upon the matter of homosexuality or strange ways of reproducing or weird courting systems and performances. But I will say one thing: birds are so much more diverse and interesting than I thought (most of the examples we had were from birds). But just remember that among humans, you find societies with monogamy, polygamy, and polyandry, so it's not just really weird (even though polygynandry is not the norm in any societies of humans that I know of, so to me, it is really weird).

I am sorry if this was a bit long, but I am trying to make up for the fact that I haven't written in a while (not really, it just became long). Here is a funny song about animal sex to make up for it.

Books read: 44
Pages read: 12507