Some of the great minds from the Animal Dept. blog met yesterday toponder future strategies. I resolved to make more short posts likethis one and am hereby coining the phrase “QuikPost”.Read more
Posts tagged: #Larry
Big Word of the Month: Acarology
Acarology is the study of ticks and mites. During the summer, all the animal keepers become acarologists. Given the amount of time we spend outdoors we inevitably run into some of these critters. Ticks and mites are not insects but rather arachnids, the same group of animals that contains spiders. All ticks are parasites that feed on the blood of their hosts by inserting a feeding tube through a small incision in the skin. Mites have more diverse lifestyles butRead more
Report of an Incident
As I’m sure is the case with most work places, when anything occurs at the Museum that could be refered to as an “incident”, we write an incident report. An incident report is just a summary of what happened, to whom, and when. It’s quite straightforward really, but as you might imagine, the incident reports that come out of the animal department can be pretty goofy. Below is a slightly edited version of the incident report I turned into SherryRead more
BWOM: Biogeochemical cycle
The Big Word of the Month is biogeochemical. You can probably figure out the meaning if you break down the root words. Scientists use the term to refer to the processes by which chemicals like nutrients move through biological (bio) and non-biological (geology and chemical) parts of the Earth’s ecosystem. One of the most important biogeochemical cycles is the Nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen is critical for animal and plant life because it is a constituent of proteins and nucleic acids (likeRead more
Trip to the National Zoological Park
On Friday I spent much of my day at the National Zoological Park in Washington, DC which is part of the Smithsonian Museum Complex. I spent most of time getting glimpses of some of the areas where the Animal Keepers work. I started my morning in the Reptile Discovery Center where I learned some helpful hints on exhibit design and modifications and saw there emergency system for dealing with venomous snake bites. As you can see from the pictures, anRead more
BWOM: Accuracy or Precision?
This month’s Big Word of the Month post involves two words that are not very big but have very specific meanings in science. Take a look at our collections of hygrometers/thermometers from the reptile room. The electronic and analog meters are in very close agreement on temperature, all around 79°F. There is a little more disagreement in the measurements of relative humidity. The electronic ones are in the 20’s while the analog one is reading around 50%. So which oneRead more