Mammals and Insects 5/31/12

Today we began class in the classroom (who would have guessed). The last two groups were presenting, starting with mammals, or in this case squirrels. W split off into various groups and began outside learning about the capture and monitoring of squirrels in the Northwest. The reason this is important is because the much more common eastern gray squirrel is driving the indigenous western gray squirrel to extinction. The eastern gray squirrel is the most common squirrel on campus and in Washington. After learning this, we continued into a small park on campus where we met and talked about the complex feeding habits of squirrels. Squirrels store their food in small holes and can remember thousands of them due to their very powerful spatial memory. In addition, they sometimes fake burying their food to fool thieves and instead take their food elsewhere. Continuing on, we came to a station where we actually got to feed campus squirrels. The squirrels hesitant at first but once they saw the food, they were no strangers. The campus squirrels have become heavily reliant on human contact for food and makes them completely different behaviorally wise to their friends that live in the wild. We then headed back inside to look at the differences of species in the squirrel family and how they vary in size. The second half of class was devoted to bees, butterflies, and beetles. We learned about different pollination techniques of butterflies and how they differ from moths. We learned that most species of bees are solitary and honey bees make up small percentage of the bee family. Bees are also an important element to our ecosystem. They pollinate far more than any other species but pesticide use is killing them off. I aslo learned bees hate the color black and feared for my life because I was wearing a black jacket while at the beehives by the UW farm. After bees, we learned about beetles and how important they are to us. like bees, they also pollinate and are important decomposers. Overall, today was very informative and helpful.

Posted on June 4, 2012 06:47 PM by twitwer