So far in lab we’ve dissected a Tulip, Worm, Starfish, Squid, Frog, and Rat.  But the thing in bio lab that has made me the most nauseated was watching a hydra sting  and paralyze a Daphnia water flea 20 times its size and then swallow it whole. I need to start bringing a camcorder to class, because all the YouTube video’s of hydra vs. Daphnia are NOT up to par with what we saw.  All the jerking and spasming. And the sheer size difference! Our hydra was itsy bitsy compared to the Daphnia it had no fear violently stabbing it and nomming down.

Hydra have no separate food-in end and food-out end.  The mouth and the anus are the same in the phylum Cnidaria. So the hydra will suck all the nutrients out of the paralyzed Daphnia and then spit it out in whole the same way it came in.  But it didn’t get the chance to do that, cause we put him in the bio waste bucket. Bwahahahahaha.  And I’m sure that little fucker dried out.

Our rat today was preggers, but apparently that wasn’t too unusual in a rat dissection. Our lab TA bragged about collecting rat fetuses all week from her 8 different labs. And she proudly walked around showing every one her collection of different sized fetuses, one was the size of a small super ball. 

Here is our rat, Sophia, from today's lab. And since one of the major things on my mind this past week was my stolen car, I couldn't help but notice the similarities in the stolen/recovered Camry to the dissected rat.

 

Also, interesting from today’s lab. We learned about lampreys. A fish that lacks a jaw. So it just attaches to other animals or to rocks and sucks.  And it is one of the ugliest creatures alive. I’ve never heard the term lamprey come up before, I swear to you. But later that afternoon I was reading "The Pillars of The Earth” by Ken Follett, and a hundred pages into the book, and I only read like 5 pages today, it says…

“King Henry has always treated the Church as if it were a subordinate part of his kingdom,” he began.  “He has issued orders to bishops, imposed taxes, and prevented the direct exercise of papal authority.”

“I know,” Philip said. “So what?”

“King Henry is dead.”

Philip stopped dead in his tracks. He had not expected that.

Francis went on: “He died in his hunting lodge at Lyons-la-Foret, in Normandy, after a meal of Lampreys, which he loved, although they always disagreed with him.”

I looked it up, turns out that’s a true story. King Henry 1 died of food poisoning in 1135 by eating this ghastly thing.  Lamprey’s are a European delicacy, so King Henry musta just had a bad batch.

Dead Lamprey (Since I don’t have a pic of a dead King Henry from lab)