If you have been following my Facebook status updates you could have gathered the classes I am most excited about this quarter--environmental horticulture, people pests and plagues, swine management, and beef cattle fitting and showing. I think I have finally come to the time in my college career when it is all making sense. Several classes that I have taken previous to this quarter are actually helping me understand concepts this quarter...I think that means "it's" working!! "It" being my college education.
One of the classes that I thought would be interesting has proved to be just that, and then some. You see, People, Pests, and Plaques is in fact about bugs. Now, I'm sure that's a taboo word, kind of like calling the media in which plants grow in Soil Science dirt. However, repeating People, Pests, and Plaques is already getting old well into only the second week of class, so I have deemed my classes as such: plant class, bug class, pig class, english, and cow class. That simplifies my life some, and it make me more interested in the subjects, oddly enough.
In about one hour I will take my first quiz of the quarter. This quiz happens to be in my "bug lab," which last week I spent dissecting a 5 inch grasshopper. That was loads of fun...no really, it was way cool! So this week, we will take a quiz on the parts of an insect. In lecture yesterday we learned about the internal systems of insects, which I found quite fascinating, because it never crossed my mind to wonder how a bug makes its blood, since they don't necessarily have bone marrow. I find myself thinking that I could name any part of a pig, cow, sheep, goat, and even chicken, but bugs are much more challenging. So after four years of judging livestock in High School bug identification can't be that bad right? Ahem:
I placed this class of insects 2,4,1,3. 2 is the most complete bug in the group which allows it to surface to the top of this class with ease. The way its head connects smoothly to its thorax, which then connects to its abdomen makes for a very appealing bug. The way its forewings come out if the second segment of its body easily makes for ideal flying capacity. In my middle pair I placed 4 over 1, because the grasshopper appearing insect has more spring to its coxa and its spiracles are large enough to provide ease of breathing. 1 has adequate leg placement, but its trochanter is a bit underneath him. Lastly, I placed the 3 bug at the bottom of the class. This bug is simply the smallest framed, worse performing insect in the class. It narrows throughout its mandibles and its compound eyes are not large enough for it to see very well, making it highly edible for predators. Therefore, I placed it last.
Those reasons came out pretty good, if I do say so myself!
Alright, back to studying. But that was good review. Stay tuned for more random facts from my interesting classes this quarter.
Did you know....that only female honey bees can sting you, because their stinger is an adapted ovapositor, which is just an extended part of their abdomen which is meant to lay their eggs underneath a surface, of which sometimes happens to be your skin?
Now you do!
Sin-steer-ly,
Malorie
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