Marine mammals lecture

 


Today we heard about marine mammals from one of the CEDO instructors, Paloma. I learned about what makes a mammal a mammal and how it differs from other organisms. Some characteristics of mammals is that they are endotherms which means they are warm blooded, their body is covered by hair or fur, they breath air and they are viviparous which means they give birth when they reproduce they don’t lay eggs like other organisms. But what I thought was awesome to learn was what makes these mammals “marine mammals” and basically over years of these mammals living in or near the ocean they developed some adaptive evolutionary traits. For example marine mammals developed a thick layer of blubber to minimize heat loss in cold ocean temperatures, they also have a modified circulatory system to help them dive under water and come up safely, they also have muscles with myoglobin which helps carry more oxygen in their muscles and they even have flexible ribs as an adaptation to the oceans water pressure. Overall this lecture was really interesting and informative thank Paloma. 



-Hector Tucto



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cholla Bay

Image
On Thursday we went to Cholla Bay to do some tide-pooling. A difference compared to other beaches we tide-pooled at was that It was flat with very little rocky areas until further on in the tide-pool. We saw many blue crabs, soft shell crabs, sea cucumbers, sand dollars, and some octopus in clam shells. However we noticed a fishing net washed ashore that may have come from illegal fishers and inside were 6 crabs that were barely alive. Noah, Noel, Sharon, Kristen and I spent upwards of 20 minutes carefully cutting and releasing the crabs back into the ocean. We then properly disposed of the fishing net afterwards. It's quite unfortunate that nobody picked up that net until we came along and disposed of it. It should be important for others to clean up even if the trash is not theirs inorder to keep the environment clean and not polluted. -Adel Redzepi
Read more

Walking sponge!!

Image
Day 1, wandering the intertidal area near CEDO. I turned over a rock and found a really unique looking sponge. As I have never seen one before i began taking photos and was completely caught off guard when it started walking!!! This actually turned out to be a species of crab that uniquely had a sponge attached to its shell which was growing successfully! Because the sponge and the crab both require similar environmental conditions this symbiosis is effectively providing the crab with a near perfect camouflage, while providing the sponge the unusual ability to move and remain in a wet location where it can collect food and prevent itself from absorbing too much air. As a sessile filter feeder this is not an ability it is typically afforded, providing an increased chance of survival in the intertidal zone where seawater is not always available. Super neat.
Read more

Some cool intertidal organisms

Image
  This decorater crab was wearing a hat! (made of sponge) This octopus inked so many times!     In the intertidal zone, we observed many different species. For example, one creature was the o ctopus; part of the Mollusk phylum. We observed the octopus use an ink spray as a form of self-defense in order to deter predators. We saw the organism ink several times in an attempt to scare us away. We also observed the 8 tentacles that are used by this organism to swim, hold things, and get around on land. This was the first of many octopi we would see!     We also saw a strange occurrence of a decorator crab using a chunk of sponge as a protective shell. It seems that the protective sponge also acts as a sort of camouflage in its environment, and helps to keep it safe from predators. These crabs are of the anthropoda phylum and must molt in order to grow. They also have 6 legs. In the second image, we observed a swimming crab. These  crabs are characterized by the...
Read more