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SCIENCE ALIVE! - Adaptable Me

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Talking about the "Exploring Adaptations" Trunk

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Good morning and welcome to SCIENCE ALIVE! and this is our December session "Adaptable Me". And today, we are going to be talking about the "Exploring Adaptations" trunk. But, before we start, coming back after the break, we are going to have two new sessions in January. On January 7th we're going to talk about turtles with the "Turtle Kit" and live turtles and it's called "Turtley Awesome Facts". And then on January 19th, we're going to be talking about our rocks and rock kits and it's "Of course, It's Rocks" So, please join us in January for a whole new year and more information about our trunks. I am Charlotte Tondre and I have with me, Peggy Gonzales. We work in the Living Science department and today we're going to talk about the "Exploring Adaptations" trunk which is on loan to us for you from TWA which is Texas Wildlife Association. We have four of these trunks and you have to place your order and reserve them. If they're not available, we will let you know when it is. But anyways let's get started. "Adaptable Me" talks about animals. And when we talk about animal's adaptations, they can either be structural or physical, like coloring, body covering, beaks, claws or behavior, such as migration, hibernation or camouflage. Each of our two trunks, A and D have a different set of animals that they highlight. In Trunk A, it features the whitetail deer, the turtle, and the armadillo. The turkey is also featured in Truck A, but that can be well reviewed for adaptation in our previous video available on our website and that's titled "Let's Talk Turkey". First of all, let's start with our deer, physical strong muscles, we have a book, "Whitetail Deer" that talks about their physical build and it has strong muscles and long legs for sprinting, they can run about 30 miles an hour. Here is a skull, they have eyes on the side of their heads for seeing Predators out on their sides, so they're looking straight ahead, they can see Predators. They also have a keen sense of hearing. They have grayish brown coloring for camouflage. Now, if you look at this pelt you can tell that they would blend well in the brush, and in dark wooded areas where the trees shade the area. They can hide pretty good. The only thing that usually gives them away is their whiting. Young fawns, which are the babies, have spots to mimic sunlight shining through leafy ground cover. An example of a behavioral adaptation is white underside of the tail raised to alert other deer of danger. So, if they hear noise they'll raise their tail, kind of like a flag, and if other deer are nearby, they'll take note and run Another item that is in the woods that we're discussing is our turtle. Red-eared slider, they have flipper like hands and feet and if you look right here they stretch out and that's what they use for swimming. They have a hard shell for protection. It's more stream-lined than the land turtle. Land turtles usually more humped over. They're thick skinned to adapt to cold weather. They adapt behaviorally by basking in the sun to regulate their body temperature from the water. And they also hibernate or go into a dormant stage in cold weather which means that they don't eat as much they're not as active they preserve their energy So those are behavioral adaptations that turtles have. The next animal that we're going to look at is the armadillo. Very common to Texas, you see a lot more of them on the roads and in the cities because we've taken over their habitats. And that’s with a lot of animals these days. They just don't have a place to go and when people build houses, and build construction for commercial building they don't think about these little animals. They have hard body bands around of the outer covering they're brownish gray for hiding in scrubby grass long sticky tongue What do they eat? grubs? Yeah, they eat a lot of insects. These are what their paws look like up closely. This is the front and this is behind So, that's what their prints would look like. And this is their skull They have a number of behavioral adaptations of course they retreat into their armor like body but they can also arch their body and expand it and stiffen it for even more protection against a predator we read that they can hold their breath for up to 6 minutes. I'm not sure how this whether this is a behavior that's like playing dead for a predator whose looking for some live food They are also excellent diggers with their clawed feet Not only for finding food but also for burrowing in order to escape What would be an armadillo's predator? What would they become prey to? Do we know this? Well, one predator is a hawk. And an armadillo could easily be just whisked away. Just grabbed and taken away. This is actually kit "B". Kit "B" is very, it has another set of animals that are very interesting So, you can go ahead and start with the skunk. Sorry, I picked up the racoon. The skunk has forward predator eyes, a stripe, a warning stripe it has a defense spray that’s very noxious to anybody, other animals And, is this the skull? Yes, How tiny. So, there's your... This skull is not necessarily in proportion to the pelt that we have. But, it's a typical, it's a correct anatomical skull. And do you know what skunks eat? They eat anything they can find, actually. Here's a picture. I imagine they will eat rodents. So, they dig through, looks like through tree trunks and rotten wood. And then the raccoon, that you were picking up earlier, they have again, predator eyes, forward looking eyes and they have the hand-like paws for climbing, they're good climbers. And raccoons are scavengers. They'll eat anything they pick through, they go to camp grounds, they pick through garbage they're great diggers they can get in places you didn't think they could get into I know that we went camping one time and we put our cooler up underneath the picnic bench the seat of it was able to raise the lid just so much. It took out about a half a dozen eggs. Let's move over to the bottle of quills and that skull there with the super threatening teeth. These are features of the porcupine. The porcupine has 30,000 quills on it and it has large beaver-like teeth and the quills usually are coming from a swat from the tail as far as propelling them or squatting them into a predator or an enemy Right next to you, Charlotte, is the Hawk, and the hawk's eyesight is eight times more powerful than human vision. That's one of their unique characteristics that allows them to successfully see and target their prey from a long distance. Is this their skull? Yes. Look at that beak Look at that. It's amazing. That beak is not only good for catching but tearing flesh and here we have a talon from the Hawk. Now you can see why they are able to pick up an armadillo Goodbye, armadillo... And if they just clinch it, you're gone! Finally, we have the horned toad lizard, there. This lizard, one of its behavioral adaptations is to pump up its spiny body so that in a predator's mouth it will pierce his throat which is, I think, a really cool defense mechanism It's kind of defensive and offensive at the same time Once it gets inside the mouth and puffs up like that, that animal can't breathe so, the first thing it's going to do is cough up what's there and let it go and then they run very fast There are some special features in both of these trunks curriculum binders, animal track rubbing plates. These are the rubbing plates. Animal specific printed books and then of course, as you've seen already, quills, pelts, feathers shells, feet and skulls, and also a set of wildlife magazine for students to read and to keep Charlotte you know what's missing in these particular trunks? A lot of the footprints are missing. I'm thinking of another specific thing... There's scat. Replicas of the animals poop is missing in these trunks But that feature is in the other TWA trunk that's called "Wildlife Investigations" Wildlife Investigations don't have the body coverings but they have twice as many skulls, so that's the difference between "Exploring Adaptations" and "Wildlife Investigations" Wildlife Investigation is basically for tracking you can track an animal by its poo you can track them by their feet if you look at an area that they have dug in you can almost tell what had dug there if you're really good at it and you do your studies on it so. We're looking forward to talking about that one. Thank you for visiting us today talking about "Adaptable Me" If you have any questions, call Region 20 Living Science at 210-370-5688 And, we can answer any more questions for you regarding the trunks or just go online to www.esc20.net, go down to Living Science Materials Center and you can place an order there. We look forward to seeing you again next month Bye

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