Homework and Notes from 11/21/14

Homework:

None, Enjoy your weekend.

Notes:


Wednesday, 11/26/14 will be our Thanksgiving Feast. The students will enjoy an array of food and we will also discuss what we are thankful for on this holiday! We will be baking Apple Crumb Cake on Monday in school for the event. Can't wait.



In Current Events today we read an article entitled Crafty Seals Follow Tracking Device Signals to Catch Fish from Dogo News. We discussed the benefits and possible reasons to use tracking devices on wild animals. The class came up with these reasons: to follow or trace an animal's lifestyle, follow their eating habits, track movements, provide protection and awareness to the dangers and study how far and where they go. Tiny monitoring devices have become an increasingly common way for scientists to study elusive animals that are difficult to track on a day-to-day basis. However, now it seems that smart seals have caught on to the trick and are using it to their advantage to catch fish! This stunning finding was revealed in a study published on November 19th, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a team of researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The scientists decided to embark on the investigation after previous research indicated that while ultrasonic frequencies produced by acoustic tags (the kind used in fish) were imperceptible to the animals they were being used on,predators like seals and sea lions were able to detect the signal quite easily. To verify if that was true, the scientists selected a group of ten juvenile grey seals that had been born in captivity. This meant that the marine animals had never encountered the ocean, nor been exposed to any kind of acoustic tags. The researchers then placed the seals one at a time, inside a pool that contained 20 foraging boxes, only two of which housed fish - one with tags and the other without. (Dogo News)