Comparative Anatomy
For this unit we choose an animal we wished to dissect and then compared it with other animals being dissected. I dissected a cat for my project. I spent two days working on the cat and unfortunately didn't get to observe another dissection. One of the most interesting things about the cat was that it's brain had less folds and was more elongated compared to a human brain. Lots of folds in a brain (like humans) means that it is more evolved and developed. The structure of the organs in it's abdominal region is vastly different compared to humans. For example it had a much larger liver in proportion to a human. The liver took up almost all of the room below the cat's diaphragm. The cat heart was relatively similar to a human heart. It had the same shape and the same chambers.
Domestication Project
For the first biology project this year, we learned about domestication and genetics. Animal's domestication has a lot to do with genetics and breeding. We look at the genetics of the animal in order to breed for the best traits. We learned about mitosis and meiosis along with pedigrees and inheritance. My project was to see if age correlates with trainability in dogs. I picked this idea because I just got a puppy and I wanted to use him for my project. I also have a six year old dog as well so they were the perfect subjects. I collected data by counting the amount of attempts it takes for the dog to do a specific command. I found that the younger dog was easier to train than the older dog.
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