Journal Entry 17

5/15/12

Location: Classroom

Weather: Not applicable as we were inside the entire time.

Mammals! I found this lecture interesting because the only mammals found on campus are squirrels. However, much was learned. Curators of museums are in charge of the things at the museums.

Mammals and birds showed up later than most of the other life organisms. About half of all vertebrate on earth are fish! Something that distinguishes mammals from other vertebrate organisms are the three middle ear bones that they have and teeth can be a good way to tell them apart as well. There are 29 different orders of mammals with about 15,400 species in North America. However, in Washington there are only 9 of the 29 orders. There are many taxa that were here, but are now extinct due to human influence or natural occurrences in time. There are 146 species in Washington, 137 of which are native species (32 are marine and 15 are flying). 90 species are native land mammals. I am curious as to which mammal species are non-native here. One time, during summer in the morning, I was on campus and saw a raccoon, and I would be curious to know if raccoons have been found around campus or if that was unusual.

If there had been the time and money for it, would have been fun to go to Northwest trek and actually see the mammals that can be found in the Pacific Northwest and learn more detail about them.

Posted on June 5, 2012 07:08 AM by lmiyamoto