Corrections part 1: Coral snakes

Coral Snakes:

In my first post, I said that coral snakes are poisonous. This is not true, the word I was looking for was venomous! My favorite saying about it is that if an animal bites (or stings) you and you get sick, it's venomous. If you bite an animal and you get sick, it's poisonous. Speaking of sayings, the "red and yellow" saying is also not 100% accurate, especially outside of the US. The rhyme "Red touches yellow- you're a dead fellow, red touches black- you're okay jack," and other variants is used in some regions to help distinguish coral snakes from nonvenomous mimics. However, as some nonvenomous snakes have red stripes touching yellow stripes, and not all coral snakes have the typical red/yellow/black pattern (or even stripes at all), I wouldn't rely on it. I would personally vouch for the rhyme "Don't touch the snake, admire it from a distance. Do not touch the snake, or you might need medical assistance."


A nonvenomous false coral snake (Scaphiodontophis annulatus),  pictured above. (Photo by Andrew DuBois on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/138578145@N04/32123300005/)


A venomous red-tailed coral snake  (Micrurus mipartitus), pictured above. (Photo by Antonsrkn on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26500525@N08/20145400272)

Update

Hi again! Wow, I can't believe it's been eight years since I posted on here. I wish I had kept going, but better late than never, right? So, an update:

I'm still fascinated with biology, and I'd love to keep this blog running. If not for science, for myself! I'll be correcting some misinformation in the previous posts, and making the long awaited 8-years-in-the-making Hamster post part 2, among others. See you on the other side!

-Scooter

Hamsters!!!!

2 pt. special!!!

As you can see, hamsters are very cute, in fact they are one of the most common

pets because of it. I know that there are many more reasons that hamsters are popular, but specials are pretty much a little bit of info and a lot of cute pictures so I'll just tell you the basic information and then I'll show you cute pictures of hamsters.hamsters are cute, cuddly, and they love to lick your fingers. 

Now,

Penguins

Penguins are small birds, but they cannot fly. The biggest penguins are Emperor penguins. Emperor penguins can get 4 ft tall. The Emperors are black birds with white and yellow markings. Other penguins are black birds but they only have white markings. They don't have wings - they are called "flippers", and flippers help them swim. Some penguins like the Adelie penguins can go up to 40 or even 100 miles per hour, while a few others are a bit faster. 15 miles per hour or higher depends on the penguin species.

Emperors also have the largest eggs among penguins. They can be 120mm long and 85 mm wide and weigh about 450 grams.

Almost every penguin puts their eggs on top of their feet so the eggs stay warm. When the chick hatches - the mother arrives. It has a nice barf dinner, awaiting the baby. It may sound gross, but it's not to the penguins.

Eagles

Eagles eat mice and berries. Bald eagles eat fish, turtles, small rodents and snakes. They catch fishes with downward looking eyes like catfish because they catch them by snatching them off the surface. 

Bald eagles hunt by waiting on a perch until the see the food. They can see a surfacing fish from a mile away.

The Fish

I wanted to find out what was inside the fish and what the brain looked like. We went to a supermarket and bought a fish. The name of this fish was Bass. He was a beautiful fish. He was gray and green on the top and white on the bottom. He had stripes along his body.


He had two fins onthe top of his back. He also had two fins on the sides behind his gills, two fins on the bottom and one fin near the tail. Some goldfish have two tails but this one had only one.


In his mouth he had teeth which are very small, but there are a lt of them and a tongue. I knew fishes had tongues because I know of that shrimp that gets inside a fish an sucks the blood out its tongue and it replaces the tongue with itself and serves as its new tongue. This is very strange. But it is not about this fish.






Behind the covers on the sides of its head there are its gills. He uses gills for breathing. The fish opens and closes the covers to pump water through them. But sharks can't. So they have to always keep swimming so that they can breathe.





Then we cut the fish open. I didn't know this but there were only a few things inside the fish. They were intestines, stomach, heart, liver and gonads. There was also kidneys but they were small. And there was a swimbladder. And also pyloric caeca. And spine.





This is the fish's heart. It was small. It was hiding between its head and liver. It had the blood in it.






This is the stomach, pyloric caeca and intestines all in one pile. They were hard to separate. We opened the stomach and found there a half-digested worm.







This is a picture of the liver. It makes enzymes that help digestion. Enzymes are chemicals that help chemical reactions in the body. Enzymes break down food and turn it into energy. Livers also cleans up the body by filtering the junk out of blood. 













These are the gonads.









Gills.

Spiny Dogfish

Spiny dogfish, also known as Mud Shark, Piked Dogfish, Skittledog, Spotted Dogfish, White-spotted Dogfish, Codshark, Thorndog, and Squalus acanthias (in Latin) lives in Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on both sides of North America.

The spiny dogfish/mud shark has dorsal spines, located in front of its two dorsal fins, no anal fin, and white spots along its back.

If the mud shark is captured, it can arch its back to pierce the attacker with its two dorsal spines. The spines are mildly poisonous. The venom of the shark is held in the tissue which is embedded in the groove along the spine. The poisonous sting can be very painful for humans. Their sting might even be lethal, but it is not yet confirmed.

Mud sharks have the longest gestation period among all vertebrates. About 2 to 11 pups are in each litter.

Mud sharks live from 25 to 100 years.