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