Tag: animal

Arthropods 101: Insects, Evolution, Classes, and Examples of Arthropods

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Making up around 75% of all animal species in the world, arthropods are are a vast phylum of the kingdom Animalia. The name comes from the Greek words “arthro”, meaning joint, and “podos”, meaning legs. While they all share segmented bodies with joined legs, members in this phylum vary wildly, from butterflies and millipedes, to scorpions and lobsters. They are also all invertebrates, which means that they do not have backbones. Instead, they use hard exoskeletons to protect themselves, which are made out of chitin. Because these exoskeletons are relatively inflexible, arthropods molt as they grow larger, which means they shed their exoskeletons.

How the Environment Responded to Covid-19

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The coronavirus pandemic may seem like one of the worst things that could be happening to the world right now. And although that might be the case for us, the environment is finally getting the break from human activity that it’s been longing for. With businesses shut down, traveling banned, and everyone in lockdown, traffic and pollution have been significantly reduced and it’s had some notable effects on nature. So while you’re stuck being quarantined, here are some cool things happening around the world as a result.

Evolution: Homology vs Homoplasy

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Lovely, isn’t she? (Yes, the furry one above.) She’s Your 65-Million-Year-Old Mother. Through modern computer analysis and evolutionary data, Maureen O’Leary a researcher from Stony Brook University and her colleagues discovered the last known common ancestor of placentals (Scientific American). Modern placentals include animals such as whales, bats, […]

Evolution: Phylogeny and Platypuses

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I know. Platypuses. I’m sure 75% of the people who are reading this post (or sentence for that matter) were attracted to the content of “platypuses.” No worries, the title is not misleading. This is about platypuses. And evolution. Ornithorhynchus anatinus or also known as the platypus is […]

The Gandhi Box by Daniel Abraham – Literary Analysis

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Analyzing the Gandhi Box’s Ending In the short story “Gandhi Box,” author Daniel Abraham explores the consequences and contagious influences of the unbalance between unbridled pure desires and submissions to societal rules. Through the climatic ending, Abraham illustrates how man’s inability to reconcile with his internal moral and instinctive […]