Well...I failed a quiz...so here's stuff on behavior....yeah...

Proximate cause versus Ultimate cause!

Proximate cause is the actual workings of a behavior. What actually triggers it? How does it actually occur? Hormones? Pheromones? etc.

Ultimate cause is the reason for the behavior. Is it to attract mates? Find food? Why do they even bother?

Ways of learning behaviors...
Imprinting:
during a critical learning period, something is learned which can't be forgotten...like "Are you my mommy?"

Classical Conditioning....one thing is associated with another. The fish swim to the top in the morning because food comes in the morning.

Operant conditioning....grab right switch...get food. grab wrong switch get shocked. Operant conditioning in a nutshell.

Spatial learning...landmarks and breadcrumbs to find one's way home

Habitutation....you get so used to something it blends in the background.

Observational learning...monkey see monkey do

Insight...use of prior knowledge

The Bodies Exhibit

So...that field trip to new york was AMAZING!!!! The bodies exhibit was just jaw dropping. I never imagined cancer looked like that. I never thought nerves were that HUGE. The circulatory system room was like an art exhibit...I could go on and on and on.

I mean look at it! <==

Being that close to real bodies...I can't quite describe it. I learned so much about how it actually looks. Models and pictures can't compare.

Livers are huge. Especially fatty ones. Enough said.

The development room sent chills down my spine. I felt guilty just to be alive. All those poor babies, dying before birth...it's tear wrenching.

What these scientists have done is amazing. Though, I do think it took a macabre sense of humor to do some of the things they did. One man was dancing with himself. Another was giving himself a high five. While amusing, I wonder if the people would have appreciated that.

And to the man who broke that poor guy's penis off...go get counseling. For everyone's sake.

Plant Hormones = Steroids + Abscisic Acid

Ok. I don't know about the rest of you, but I find something rather amusing about all this plant hormone stuff. For starters, the first three groups to present in A-block all refered to their hormones as steroids, and with good reason. Because of the five kinds of hormones we're covering right now, four of them induce growth, only one inhibits it. Abscisic acid should hold its head up high, it has alot going against it.

Of course, auxin seems to be in charge. At least one of the other hormones(cytokinins, and I believe gibberellin) depends on auxin to function.

I also give props to ethylene for being a gas, and able to both ripen our fruit and help them rot. Way to play both sides.

Today i heard the phrase, her/his "periderm is worse than " his/her "bite". (I can't remember the gender.) Puns make the world go round. With that in mind, I scoured the internet for biology puns...

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/4_3.html#subindex

I think some of them are just downright nerdy, don't you?

Of course, the best puns are the ones you come up with yourself...so let me take a crack at this:

"What did the DNA say to the RNA? We don't need U here."

Ok, I can't think of any others. :(

Perhaps I'm not cut out to be a comedian.

Oh well, pass me a gamma-radiation sterilized scalpel and I'll make a wet-slide of that apple I wanted to eat.

Roots. Roots seem to be the best thing since sliced bread for plants. Not only do they absorb nutrients and water, they can perform so many other functions. They can store nutrients and organic materials. They keep the plant from blowing away and the topsoil from vanishing with the wind. They can be big and sociopathic(taproots) or small and in such numbers as to make them just clumps of awesome. And they can be tasty. Onions, potatoes, stuff like that. All roots. Ginger. Root. Root beer. No brainer, comes from a root. Seriously, we should get some of these. We should all lay down roots. (literally).

Or not. I like moving around too much to do that.

Dermal Tissue Systems make me jealous...

Ok, it might just be me, but plants have WAYY better defense than we do. We have...skin. And when that skin tears..it just gets patched up. Plants(like trees) get BARK! WOOD! Way better than our little fleshy stuff.

I just can't help thinking that animals got the short end of the evolutionary stick. Heterotrophic. Dependence on sexual reproduction. Soft skin.

We don't even get pretty flowers on our heads!

Seriously...we should revolt and become sentient plants. We could be lazy all day, we could make our own food, we wouldn't have messy relationship issues because we never even have to see the organisms we mate with...

That'd be simple as 1, 2, 3.

Of course...it'd be pretty boring too.