Office hours. Such a wonderful time in which we can get to know our teachers and bond with them. They even get to know our names. I don’t really understand the point of that because we’ll only be in their class for one semester but…oh well. Anyway, today I meandered over to meet with my Biology teacher to thrash out some issues with the circulatory and respiratory systems. We talked about the direction of blood flow, and pumping cycles, all very exciting things to behold (to Bio majors, I’m not sure how you people feel about it). And we started to talk about insect respiration. This may sound stupid, but suck it up, you have to listen to it. I was fascinated to learn that insects didn’t have lungs, they had lots of tiny vessels that opened into their skin by which they absorbed oxygen from the air. Sort of like amphibians breathing through their skin but…different.
“That’s fantastic,” I said enthusiastically, “So if you dipped an insect in honey it would suffocate?”
She just blinked at me for a minute and I thought over what I had said. Oh. That would be considered socially unacceptable, neh? Oops.
“You must have been a sadistic little child.”
I laughed. I liked this teacher, she’s fun.
-Meghan
4 comments:
The proper response.......
"Yeah, just a little....."
that's actually really cool, same goes for underwater, except well we suffocate underwater too. we'd probably suffocate in honey, but not if we were dipped. hmm people in honey. but really that's cool i didnt know that.
Its like when you capture lightning bugs, to smear them on the road and write your name in the glow-in-the-dark guts. Muhahaha....
All of this learning about body systems is sadly ruining sci-fi and fantasy for me, because now I'll read about a mermaid and I'll question it's anatomy to death. But it can't breathe underwater because a one circuit heart isn't enough to support the metabolism of something that size, and the gills wouldn't process enough oxygen to--okay, I'll stop.
-Meghan
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