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Recently I ran across some great animated gifs that explore breathing for different life forms- including humans... It got me thinking: Have you ever stopped to consider how you Breathe? It's a process that deeply affects every cell of the body. Rate, depth and location of our breath send unique messages to the rest of our body about our state of wellbeing and can greatly influence our health- for the better or the worse. Often we don't think about the amazing physiological sophistication of it all!

Breathing and Chemical/Ph Balance:

Proper diaphragmatic breathing helps us maintain a proper chemical balance of CO2 and O2 in our blood - keeping CO2 in high enough concentration- a "sweet spot" if you will, that allows for proper separation of O2 from Hemoglobin and delivery to the tissues.

Without just the right amount of CO2, O2 remains tightly bound to our red blood cells and never reaches it's delivery in the cells! Breathing too shallowly and quickly (upper chest breathing) as you would in a stressed state can blow off too much CO2 and leave our cells gasping for oxygen, despite it's prolific presence in our blood...

Breathing and its 'Mechanical' Effects

Breathing helps your internal organs and digestion. Proper diaphragmatic breathing massages the internal organs as the diaphragm moves downwards- this rhythmic pressing from above increases new blood flow/circulation to these organs and can greatly aid in peristalsis- helping with the process of digestion and elimination. Have Constipation? Working on proper diaphragmatic breathing could be a lifesaver.

Have varicose veins or circulation issues? Diaphragmatic breathing can greatly increase venous return- blood flow from veins back up towards the heart against gravity. How? Through the process of the 'respiratory pump': as the Ribcage (Thoracic Cavity) expands and the diaphragm drops downwards, air is sucked into the lungs by vacuum pressure- and at the same time a rush of blood is sucked from the venous system of the body into the lung tissues to meet the air and carry away fresh oxygen to the body.

The vacuum pressure of this respiratory pump greatly aids the heart in helping fight gravity to accomplish venous return from the far flung areas of the body, such as our legs. Interested in understanding the mechanism better? Here's a great video by Dr. John Campbell.

There's far more to the effects of breathing than this- from activation of your Autonomic Nervous System priming you for a relaxing nap... or for a day of stress, your breathing can help you not only react to, but also shape your emotional response to your life.

In Part 2, we'll look into our emotional response system, how it's tied to our breathing, and ways we can use our breath to strongly affect our sense of wellbeing!

Until then, I leave you with a fun comparative graphic of human breathing mechanics vs some other creatures we share this earth with... enjoy! 🙂

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Recently I ran across some great animated gifs that explore breathing for different life forms- including humans... It got me thinking: Have you ever stopped to consider how you Breathe? It's a process that deeply affects every cell of the body.

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Interactive with instruction in-between each section

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Interactive with instruction in-between each section

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DNA Transcription -- Basic Detail | HHMI BioInteractive Video

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This site was designed for students of 9th grade introductory biology. It contains textbook resources, such as chapter review guides, homework sets, tutorials, and printable images. Each chapter has a practice quiz and study tips for learning the topic.

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The threat of invasive species - Jennifer Klos

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Rocky Mountain Wolf Quest - Exploring wolf reintroduction in Colorado

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Genetic Variation [Internet]. Salt Lake City (UT): Genetic Science Learning Center; 2017 [cited 2021 Feb 12] Available from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/evolution/variation

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The Outcome of Mutation [Internet]. Salt Lake City (UT): Genetic Science Learning Center; 2017 [cited 2021 Feb 12] Available from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/evolution/outcomes/

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Includes lesson plans (see resources section of each lesson)

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Patterns Science - Unit 2 - Biomolecules

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inquiryHub: Research-based Curricula Supporting Next Generation Science

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Go to the iHub Biology Course Materials Google Drive
The inquiryHub biology curriculum is a full-year high school biology course anchored in phenomena and aligned to the framework for Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Guided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), inquiryHub High School Biology embeds community science into curriculum. Using research-based approaches to teaching science in a deeply digital environment, students contribute resources, observations, data, and analyses to solve larger scientific problems.

inquiryHub Biology is designed to go beyond traditional science content. By focusing on phenomena relevant to students' lives and communities, the course provides opportunities to authentically engage with science and engineering practices. The combination of community science, technology, and a focus on science and engineering practices has been shown to help students feel more like scientists, including the belief that their ability to do science can make a difference in their world (Bang & Medin, 2010; Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010; Roth & Lee, 2003; Shutt, Vye, & Bransford, 2011; Tzou & Bell, 2010).

Development

A team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and Northwestern University working with teachers from Denver Public Schools district designed three units, which address all of the performance expectations in the NGSS for high school biology. Scientists are part of the team and have reviewed all content for accuracy. Achieve, Inc., which reviews science units, has reviewed the first unit in the curriculum and rated it as High Quality NGSS Design.

Storylines

Three units are organized around coherent storylines, in which students ask and investigate questions related to an anchoring phenomenon or design challenge. Students use science and engineering practices to figure out Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) and crosscutting concepts needed to make sense of and explain the phenomena or solve the problem presented in the challenge.

Phenomena

The phenomena that students work together to explain in biology are antibiotic resistance and a bird population that evolved to become bold (Evolution), Duchenne Muscular dystrophy and gene editing (Genetics), how trees can mitigate climate change and population changes among large animals on the Serengeti (Ecosystems). Each has been chosen with input from Denver students as to what would be interesting and engaging to students like them.

Science and Engineering Practices

Students engage with all eight science and engineering practices, becoming more proficient in learning when and how to use the practices. Lessons engage students in practices where they investigate, make sense of phenomena and problems, construct and critique models, and develop explanations and arguments. The units are designed to support students in becoming more sophisticated in their use of practices over the school year. Design challenges help students integrate knowledge across units; over time, students are expected to take more and more responsibility in problem solving within them. At the end of the genetics unit, students organize a World Cafe where they design questions for and facilitate a dialogue with peers, parents, and community members about the ethics of genetic engineering.

Embedded Assessments

There are multiple assessments embedded in the materials that can be used for formative and summative purposes. These include exit tickets with multiple-choice questions that assess both student experience and understanding, student models of phenomena, and 3D transfer tasks in which students apply what they have learned to a new phenomenon. The modeling tasks are accompanied by SLO rubrics that can be used to build a portfolio of evidence of student progress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Go to the iHub Biology Course Materials Google Drive The inquiryHub biology curriculum is a full-year high school biology course anchored in phenomena and aligned to the framework for Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Guided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), inquiryHub High School Biology embeds community science into curriculum.

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Rich with examples of adaptations and consideration of form and function. Fossil evidence.

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♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ THOMPSON: Horses.

[ Snorts ] No other animal has done more for us.

They're bigger, stronger, and faster than we are.

[ Poignant tune plays ] And, not so long ago, all horses were wild.

[ Neighing ] So how did this huge animal end up as our companion?

[ Grumbling ] My name is Niobe Thompson.

I'm an anthropologist [chuckling] and I just love horses.

[ Whinnying ] I've discovered that's something I share with people all over the world.

[ Triumphant music climbs ] So I wonder: What makes horses and humans so perfect for each other?

Come with me on a journey around the world and back in time to the origins of this magnificent creature.

♪♪ [ Theme plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Portentous chorale plays ] THOMPSON: A horse in motion [ Neighing ] is poetry.

We call them the aristocrat of animals for a reason.

Their beauty is hypnotizing.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] But there's more to a horse than meets the eye.

Like their unparalleled speed.

A horse can gallop twice the speed of humans, with a rider on its back.

[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ No horse is bigger than this.

A Belgian draft horse can pull 4 tons.

♪♪ But that isn't all.

[ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Performer vocalizing tender tune ] The body of a horse works in some very strange ways.

♪♪ Horses have enormous eyes... [ Neighs ] ...the biggest eyes of any animal on land.

[ Huffs ] In daylight, horses see almost as well as humans.

But, at night, they see better.

♪♪ They have almost 360° vision.

They have only two blind spots: just behind and directly in front.

♪♪ But, even here, [ Neighs ] horses have a kind of second sight.

Like a human hand, their lips are loaded with nerve endings.

[ Grumbling ] Their whiskers are so sensitive, they can detect what their eyes can't see.

[ Grumbling ] ♪♪ Like beavers, their teeth never stop growing.

♪♪ [ Ominous chord strikes ] And, at the end of their long, thin legs, horses have shock absorbers.

[chuckling] They're called hooves.

♪♪ These natural gifts add up to an incredible animal.

[ Triumphant music plays ] But the most amazing thing of all is they give those gifts to us.

♪♪ When I ride my horse, I forget how much bigger he is than me.

♪♪ He's just so eager to please.

♪♪ So how did Nature create such a perfect partner?

♪♪ What are the origins of the horse?

[ Suspenseful music plays ] It's a story that began 45 million years back in time.

The Eocene.

Dinosaurs had gone extinct.

[ Birds twittering ] Tiny primates, our ancestors, had emerged.

And so had the earliest horse.

[ Whimsical sting plays ] Few traces remain of that ancient world.

The best place to find them is this abandoned mine in Germany, called Grube Messel.

Evolutionary biologist Martin Fischer began his career digging for fossils here.

It was a good choice.

This is the world's richest source of Eocene fossils.

FISCHER: It's beautiful. -THOMPSON: Is that a alligator or a...? -FISCHER: It's a fish.

THOMPSON: It's a fish? -FISCHER: It's a fish.

THOMPSON: Nearby is a museum, built to hold the discoveries from below.

♪♪ FISCHER: These are all original fossils.

100% original.

THOMPSON: This is the treasure room.

It holds some of the most perfectly preserved fossils ever discovered.

Crocodiles.

Birds.

Even bats, with their wing tissues still visible.

And the crown jewel: a 40-million-year-old fossil of Dawn Horse.

A creature like led to horses today.

Amazing! I've never seen such a well-preserved fossil from this era.

FISCHER: Yeah. It's just wonderful.

But, we have special permission to take it up, to see it some very close, and I can explain the anatomy.

THOMPSON: Oh, it's heavy! -FISCHER: It's heavy.

Okay.

THOMPSON: The fossil is so complete, we can even see its last meal: grapes.

Dawn Horse was a fruit eater.

FISCHER: It's perfectly preserved in here and we have the four toes in the front.

You see these huge canines here.

It looks like a dog. -THOMPSON: It really does.

I mean, this looks like a meat eater to me.

FISCHER: [laughs] If you ask yourself why today's stallions have a canine, the answer is here.

THOMPSON: But, still, Martin, I look at this animal.

I mean, it's tiny.

It has these big, padded feet.

I just don't see FISCHER: I totally agree.

And, actually, this horse never thought of becoming a horse.

Like always in my life, I wanted to see things moving and I would love to see this horse moving.

THOMPSON: Martin made his name by showing us how animals move from the inside out.

Dogs.

Cats.

♪♪ Even lizards.

♪♪ But with Dawn Horse, he's tackling something much more difficult.

Using what he's learned about animals, Martin is going to rebuild Dawn Horse, bone by bone, and, then, bring her to life.

It's the very definition of an educated guess.

FISCHER: We can show you a first attempt.

THOMPSON: You've got some of the bones in movement now?

FISCHER: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Yeah, I'd love to see that.

Wow. Okay, so, there's a sense of life there.

Those legs seem to be moving realistically to me.

FISCHER: That's the point. -THOMPSON: Even though there's nothing attached to those legs, -FISCHER: [Laughing] THOMPSON: there's no animal above them, the legs are moving.

How long is it going to take you to get to the full, moving animal?

FISCHER: I would guess that -- What you would say, another three months?

MAN: [Laughing] FISCHER: Two to four months?

Simply difficult.

THOMPSON: Okay, Martin, well, I'm gonna come back in three months and we'll see how far you've gotten.

How 'bout that? -FISCHER: Okay.

Sirs, no more weekend, [ Laughter ] no holidays, no nothing.

Doing all this work, it fun.

That's science.

It's sailing to an unknown island and our island, in the moment, is Dawn Horse.

This is what an explorer or a scientist does and it's great fun.

♪♪ THOMPSON: All Martin's hard work finally pays off.

[ Whimsical tune plays ] He can now reveal how Dawn Horse's bones fit together.

[ Clacking ] ♪♪ And how this creature moved.

♪♪ Unlike a horse, had a flexible spine.

♪♪ She could turn and corner.

♪♪ Dawn Horse didn't gallop.

She scampered.

♪♪ [ Snort ] Compared to horses today, she was tiny, a vulnerable animal.

♪♪ Desperate for cover.

♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] It's true this creature was nothing like the horse we know.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] But she was a perfect reflection of her own tropical world.

There were dangerous predators.

[ Neighs ] But also places to hide.

♪♪ Dawn Horse was built to survive in dense forests.

[ Ethereal vocals play ] But I wonder: How did this evolve into [ Ominous music climbs ] What on Earth happened to horses?

[ Suspenseful music plays ] Well, the answer is: Earth happened.

[ Portentous chorale plays ] Early horses were perfectly suited to their world, full of dense, lush forests, full of cover from predators.

I'm only a few feet away from you, but look how easy it is for me to hide.

And look at all the succulent leaves: a herbivore's feast!

This was a greenhouse world.

It stayed hot for millions of years and, in all that time, Dawn Horse hardly changed at all.

And then, about 18 million years ago, the Earth began to cool.

♪♪ With the cooling climate, tropical forests began to disappear.

[ Birds chirping ] A cooler world was also a drier world and, now, early horses were challenged to adapt.

As new kinds of horse emerged, to survive the cooling climate, new plants also appeared and the result was that large parts of the planet were covered by an entirely new habitat: grasslands!

[ Triumphant chorale climbs ] ♪♪ Grasses were Nature's answer to this cooler, drier world.

♪♪ Pound for pound, grass isn't as nutritious as the fruits and nuts of the Eocene forest, but this was now the habitat horses chose and it's amazing, just how much plant shaped the horse.

[ Snuffling ] Blades of grass are like sandpaper on teeth.

♪♪ So horses' heads became longer, to make room for rows of molars that never stop growing.

[ Snorting ] Their enormous eyes moved up their long heads, perfect for spotting danger while eating.

♪♪ Horses even developed a special kind of stomach, able to quickly digest grasses and immediately run.

♪♪ No cow can do that.

♪♪ Horses now lived in a world without cover.

Keeping a distance from predators was critical, so horses had to get faster.

♪♪ As horses grew, their legs became longer and thinner, the legs of a runner.

[ Neighing ] ♪♪ But the most amazing change of all was in their toes.

♪♪ They lost them all.

Except one.

[ Crackling ] Martin Fisher helps me understand.

FISCHER: Remember the Dawn Horse?

Four in the front THOMPSON: Yeah. -FISCHER: and three in the back.

THOMPSON: That's right. The phalanges, the finger bones.

FISCHER: This is the upper arm and this is the lower arm.

That's the wrist joint.

These are the bones here. -THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.

FISCHER: And this is the finger.

THOMPSON: The finger. Amazing.

And they stand on the end of that finger and run on it.

I mean, that's incredible. -FISCHER: That's the point.

THOMPSON: And you say running.

How does this structure make running more efficient or faster?

FISCHER: The lesser surface you have, the lesser friction you have.

The lesser friction you have, the faster you can go.

THOMPSON: Right. Stands to reason.

So it makes sense that you would go up on one toe and have a delicate connection to the Earth.

FISCHER: This is really an extreme adaptation.

THOMPSON: The epitome of a runner.

♪♪ Standing on a single toe, the horse sits far out on the end of its evolutionary branch: an animal built to run, specialized for speed.

♪♪ Millions of years after it evolved, that extraordinary ability has us bewitched.

♪♪ In the modern world, machines do the work horses once did, but our fascination with the running horse hasn't ebbed at all.

♪♪ For good reason.

There's no other animal on Earth that can carry a human this fast.

♪♪ It just shouldn't be possible.

How does this huge mammal practically fly?

[ Birds chirping ] If you want to understand just why horses are so fast, Kentucky is a good place to start.

David Lambert has spent a lifetime studying the thoroughbred, breaking down the physics and chemistry of a running horse.

I've pulled David away from his work to help me understand, with the help of a special, slow-motion camera.

There we go. So we'll be able to see the footage on this monitor as the horse runs by.

LAMBERT: Perfect. Yeah. Let's do it.

[ Hooves thudding ] THOMPSON: Hoh! -LAMBERT: [Laughing] THOMPSON: Honestly, all I see is a blur LAMBERT: Yes. Yes. -THOMPSON: of moving parts as he goes past.

If we take that run-past and slow it down a little bit, tell me what you're seeing there in the body.

LAMBERT: So let's look as he puts his foot onto the ground, right there, and, now, he's loading that tendon and that ligament, and it's bouncing and throwing the leg forward.

That leg's being thrown by elastic, stored energy, not by muscle.

And it's like a catapult.

The size of the forces just throw those bones out there and back again and onto the next stride.

THOMPSON: So that's very efficient, when those elastics give the energy back to the horse. -LAMBERT: Yes.

Yes, without that elastic energy, he'd have to have legs which were 100 pounds in weight, just in muscle, to move his big body.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] We're dealing here with a very heavy animal.

1,000 pounds, 1,100, 1,200 pounds.

[ Snorts ] As that weight descends, it loads up all the soft tissues in that limb.

The load is suddenly released and, then, the leg is simply propelled out into space, driven by stored, elastic energy.

It's happening all over the horse's body: along his back, on his hind legs.

When he gets going, he's going so fast and there is so much stored energy, it reaches a point where it's beyond control.

♪♪ ♪♪ When you compare him to all the other mammalian species, he kind of stands alone, in terms of his size and his speed.

He's out there on a little pinnacle all on his own.

♪♪ THOMPSON: You know, I've noticed one thing: When we're listening to the training horses as they go past, you hear this enormous breath, every stride.

It sounds like they're struggling for breath.

LAMBERT: Their stride is linked, one-to-one, to their breathing.

When the horse runs, he must breathe out when his front legs hit the ground and he can only breathe in when he's up in the air.

[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ When run and breathe, we're using our ribs.

He's not doing that.

His ribs are locked closed and when he puts his weight on his front legs like that, the weight and the momentum of his viscera is pushing against the diaphragm and creating like a big piston inside his body, so it pushes the air out -THOMPSON: I see.

LAMBERT: and then, when he comes up in the air, the viscera drop back and it sucks the air in.

So he's a big piston, doing this.

THOMPSON: Front legs down, breathe out.

Up in the air, breathe in.

♪♪ LAMBERT: And that creates certain limitations.

The faster he goes, the less time he's got to breathe.

THOMPSON: It sounds to me like it's not -- It's not like breath holding, but it is like suffocation.

LAMBERT: It would be suffocation for you and I, but, again, the horse is different.

His body has adapted to tolerate this unique situation that allows him to keep going longer than you or I could keep going.

♪♪ We don't think of racing, the first step of a race, as being the first event in asphyxiation.

If you or I were to run, we can't drop our oxygen level.

It's too painful.

A horse, however, doesn't seem to have those same restraints.

He'll take all the last, little drop of oxygen and drain it all out, right to the very, very last drop.

♪♪ He's at a point, at the end of a race, which would render you or I unconscious.

For some people, it would almost kill them.

It's extraordinarily severe.

♪♪ THOMPSON: Severe for us, but not for a horse.

♪♪ That ability, to run on very little oxygen, is a gift of evolution and in the past, it kept wild horses alive as they outran their predators.

[ Whinnying ] All horses can do it.

But some can do it better.

♪♪ Tapeta Farm, in Maryland.

A kind of exclusive, private school for thoroughbreds and the home of legendary trainer Michael Dickinson.

Owners send Michael their most promising horses and he tells how promising they are.

[ ] DICKINSON: That's nearly perfect.

THOMPSON: He works closely with David, who's spent a lifetime building a system to predict how fast a horse will run.

[ Neighing in distance ] [ Whinnying ] SPEAKER: Easy, girl.

THOMPSON: Today, David and Michael are taking three horses out for testing.

He needs these horses to sustain 45 miles an hour for a mile.

That's twice as fast as humans have gone.

DICKINSON: Perfect.

[ ] Well done, Alex. Thank you.

My one-acre road.

So they all went all right, didn't they?

[ Grumbling ] Did nothing wrong, did he?

THOMPSON: A hard gallop is punishing.

But it turns out, the cost is even higher than I thought.

[ Neighing ] LAMBERT: When a horse tries to run flat out, he's so big and he's going so fast, so there's a price to pay for that.

The blood gets more and more acidic all the time.

The carbon dioxide in his blood builds up and up and up and up and gets really high.

THOMPSON: These are all things that, when we're running or we're swimming, feel really painful, and tell us to stop, -LAMBERT: Yes, yes, exactly. -THOMPSON: like a brake on our effort. -LAMBERT: Yes, yes, exactly.

And horses switch those brakes off.

[ Neighs, snorts ] It's not altogether surprising that horses should be able to do this because there are other animals.

Seals, when they dive.

He can go down into the water and swim around for a long time without having to breathe.

Essentially, it's the same process.

[ Huffing ] THOMPSON: So when get a pain signal that tells us to stop running, something different happens in a horse.

It begins to metabolize energy without oxygen.

Human do this, but not as well as horses.

LAMBERT: Some of the byproducts of this process are euphoric.

He's feeling positive; he's feeling energized.

Basically, he's high.

So the typical picture that a person would have of a thoroughbred racehorse is that bouncing, lively, snorting animal.

All of that is coming from this euphoria they're feeling, having gone to a level of fatigue that we couldn't even tolerate.

THOMPSON: The physiology of the horse is set up to sacrifice everything for a run. -LAMBERT: Mm-hmm, absolutely.

THOMPSON: Can you think of another animal that would do that for us? -LAMBERT: No, no, it's amazing.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] [ Ethereal vocals join ] ♪♪ All those things that we feel when we're around a racehorse: courage, admiration.

♪♪ There's something special about these animals because they've endured.

♪♪ [ Snuffling ] ♪♪ And there's something unbelievably trusting about the way they will respond to the care of the humans and come around and do it again.

♪♪ THOMPSON: Horses take us to speeds we could reach on our own two feet.

[ Triumphant chorale plays ] Yet, without a human in sight, horses still love to run.

It's just their nature.

♪♪ [ Neighs ] So I wonder, in the horse's past, was their amazing speed how they survived?

♪♪ Only one animal can answer question.

[ Neighs ] ♪♪ Deep in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, there's a cousin of the modern horse, very different than the animal know.

We call them Przewalski horses.

Incredible.

It's gorgeous!

Right down there is a green valley running right along the sands of the Gobi Desert and, somewhere in that valley is the closest living relative of the horse.

This species went extinct in the wild, but, now, it's back.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ [ Birds tweeting ] [ Tender tune plays ] ♪♪ [ Snorts, grumbles ] ♪♪ [ Snorts ] A stallion group.

[ Whinnying ] No mares in sight.

For now, this is play-fighting.

Rehearsal.

[ Snorts ] ♪♪ The Przewalski horse is so rare, I've only ever seen them in pictures.

At one point, there were only 12 animals left, all of in captivity.

[ Whinnies ] Few people believed these horses would ever return to the wild.

[ Whinnying ] They're here today because of woman: conservation biologist Claudia Feh.

For decades, Claudia fought to bring a handful out of captivity and, eventually, back to their native habitat.

Now, there are 67 in her reserve.

Most of were born here, in the wild.

[ Whinnying, snorting ] Claudia's project is a fragile success.

♪♪ Because the Przewalski lives in the closest thing there is to the original home of horses, I think they can tell me how horses survived we tamed them.

♪♪ At dawn, Claudia takes me out to find the biggest herd.

To survive, wild horses need a big territory, but that means they can be very hard to find, even for Claudia.

Yep. I don't see a thing.

FEH: I see many things, but no horse.

[ Laughter ] [ Clicking ] -They're in the sandy part. Very strange.

Usually, when they are in unusual places, something happened in the night.

Either there were stallion problems, stallion fights, or wolf attacks.

[ Birds chirping ] THOMPSON: Just a generation ago, all Przewalskis lived in zoos.

But out here, nothing is protecting them from predators.

The Mongolian wolf is a constant threat.

[ Snorting ] So is it speed that keeps these horses alive?

Or is it something else?

FEH: I choose the animals in such a way that they would be compatible because I really hoped that they would form a herd again.

The big herds are much more efficient against predators.

[ Whinnying ] Horses' typical predators are wolves.

They hunt in packs.

I've seen wolf attacks.

The whole herd gathered together and the stallions attacked.

THOMPSON: The stallions FEH: Attacked. They attacked; tried to bite and tried to kick them with their forelegs.

So you have cooperative predators and cooperative prey.

THOMPSON: So the fact that they're being predated by groups of wolves has forced to be cooperative.

FEH: They do have a sort of real cooperation.

They know what task sharing is in the highly complex social herds.

[ Snorting ] [ Poignant tune plays ] THOMPSON: But not all herds are the same.

There are bachelor groups, a collection of stallions without mates; and there are family groups, mares and foals, with a single stallion.

♪♪ The bonding behavior is constant.

Mutual grooming.

Subtle hierarchy displays.

And, sometimes, not so subtle.

[ Whinnying ] ♪♪ The horses are constantly negotiating for a rung on the ladder.

Each horse has its place.

Hierarchy gives the herd strength and ensures only the fittest stallions get to mate.

♪♪ But I'm surprised to learn it isn't just the toughest stallions who rise to the top.

FEH: The dominance hierarchy in horses is not based on size.

It's not based on physical strength.

It's mental strength.

It's personality.

THOMPSON: It's recognizing character.

You recognize the character of the leader.

FEH: Yeah. And I think that translates to the horse-human relationship because, obviously, if you ride a horse, I mean, the horses are, what, about ten times heavier or five times heavier?

So how can we ride a horse, being so much smaller, and dominate the horse?

It's mental.

[ Snorts ] ♪♪ THOMPSON: These wild horses can fight and run.

But, according to Claudia, that isn't ♪♪ For them, survival is about working together, about social life.

Perhaps that's why they accept Claudia almost like one of the herd.

♪♪ Left to themselves, horses build a community.

And, just like for us, it's the community that protects them.

FEH: I try to help them have a more natural life.

Horses do not need to be ridden, you know? [laughs] They don't need us.

They are independent, happy to be independent.

♪♪ THOMPSON: This amazing spectacle, truly wild horses living without humans, it's like a vision from the past with a message about horses today.

It turns out, speed and power aren't so important as the quality they share with a social mind.

[ Grumbling ] And, everywhere we see horses today, we see that social mind at work.

What the Przewalski horses do in the wild, our own horses do in our fields, if we only let them be themselves.

It's amazing how eager horses are to please.

Without a language in common, that's like mind-reading, an incredible ability that English animal psychologist Karen McComb is trying to understand.

At a riding stable, Karen's researchers are preparing for a day of horse testing.

For Karen, this is science.

But, for the horses, [chuckling] it's play.

McCOMB: I mean, anyone who's worked with horses, they sense this enormous personality that differs from individual to individual.

No one has looked at that it an animal.

We're used to the way humans express emotion, but, actually, horses are making these very subtle facial movements and have an incredibly mobile face and they are expressing emotions as well.

What we really want to do is work out what the emotional life of horses really is, what their emotional world is really like.

THOMPSON: To build her library of horse emotions, Karen has designed a set of experiments to trigger them.

[ Whimsical tune plays ] She plays recorded horse talk and observes the response.

[ Rumbling nearby ] Startled and afraid. [ Cheeping ] Or curious.

♪♪ She shows them photographs of horses and of humans.

[ Neighing nearby ] ♪♪ Toffee likes this one.

[ Neighing nearby ] [ Snorting ] This one isn't so popular.

♪♪ Karen's team has made the surprising discovery that horses have 17 different facial expressions.

That's three more than chimpanzees and more than dogs.

[ Neighing nearby ] They're subtle.

But, by playing the images back, Karen can show me what the untrained eye might miss.

McCOMB: He's sniffing the ground, ostensibly, and you'd think, 'Ooh, he's just sniffing the ground.

Another horse was in here.'

But stop. Actually, that sniffing the ground again occurs consistently in response to something that's a so that he's unsure about this.

Humans do that as well, you know.

When we're a bit uncomfortable, we might scratch ourselves or we glance away from something.

Just gives us a little bit of time to adjust.

[ Birds chirping ] [ Hooves thudding ] [ Snorting ] So, now, this'll be interesting.

Look at what part of the face he's gonna go to.

Look, he's going towards the -- -THOMPSON: Right to the mouth.

McCOMB: The mouth, yeah.

And sometimes they go right up to the eyes. Yeah.

It's interesting, that sweep between the mouth and the eyes.

It's almost as if they understand that the mouth and the eyes are the most significant bit of the human face.

They have enough understanding to interpret, not only emotion in the faces of their own species, but emotion in faces.

[ Birds chirping ] [ Hooves thudding ] THOMPSON: It makes sense that horses use emotions [ Neighing nearby ] to communicate with each other.

But what fascinates me is they can read emotions as well.

[ Huffing ] McCOMB: They're capable of putting together the sort of representation of the person with the emotion.

To me, that shows a very acute emotional awareness.

I mean, that means, really, horses are eavesdropping on the human world all the time.

[ Neighing nearby ] [ Snorts ] THOMPSON: Horses are mind-readers.

But that's not all.

Karen is also interested in another quality: curiosity.

[ Neighing ] So this is interesting.

Leanne is going to do what she calls a novel-object test, which means walking into a paddock full of horses with a great, big beach ball and leaving it there and observing what the horses do.

Will they run away from it or will they come and investigate it?

-[Neighing] -[Snorts] McCOMB: Horses are naturally very inquisitive.

[ Neighing nearby ] We're also trying to see where personality fits into the whole thing.

For example, how bold an individual is, versus shy.

It's these differences, which we also see in humans, that are going to be the stuff of their emotional lives, too.

[ Grumbling ] THOMPSON: With these tests, Karen is able to identify outgoing horses and introverts, just like we see in humans.

Popular horses like to spend time with other horses.

But the horse standing at the edge of the field might prefer human company.

-[Neighing] -[Snorts] McCOMB: Children who don't fit in will turn to their pets, but it's quite interesting [chuckling] that horses that don't quite fit in will also turn to humans.

[ Neighing nearby ] [ Snorting ] And our tests are actually showing that.

[ Tender tune plays ] [ Rumbling ] THOMPSON: These experiments paint a picture of an intensely social, curious, emotionally alive creature.

If we pay attention, we can read a horse's mind and they can read ours.

[ Neigh nearby ] ♪♪ And, wherever we bring horses to work, mind-reading is just part of the job.

[ Lowing ] On the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, horsepower still means just what it always has.

Working cattle is one of the most demanding jobs a human can ask a horse to do, and that's why cowboys created the quarter horse... [ Snorts ] ...a remarkable breed, combining endurance, agility, power... ANDERSON: Whoa. -THOMPSON: ...and smarts.

ANDERSON: [Whistles] [ Birds chirping ] [ Smooching ] THOMPSON: In horse country, Jimmy Anderson is a bit of a legend.

They say he can read a horse's mind.

But maybe it's the other way around.

[ Snorting ] Either way, he seems to have a secret language with his horse, a gelding called Maverick. -ANDERSON: Up. [cluck] Up. [cluck] He likes sittin'. [ Laughing ] Whoa.

[ Birds chirping ] THOMPSON: People who are not working with horses the way you work with horses, they're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

There's a whole animal they haven't discovered.

ANDERSON: The person really doesn't see and look at that horse.

They just kind a treat it like a motorbike.

THOMPSON: And a motorbike is not a smart animal.

[ Laughter ] Not compared to a horse.

ANDERSON: Not compared to a horse.

That is so true.

[ Lowing ] THOMPSON: Cutting calves is standard ranch work.

But, it me.

In nature, wild horses were chased by predators.

So how does Jimmy get Maverick to do It's the behavior of a sheepdog, not a horse.

When you're cutting, are you giving Maverick directions to go right and left?

ANDERSON: It's happenin' too fast.

If you're trying to give them directions to go right and left, most times, you're late.

When I drop my hand, that's signaling to him, 'Okay, now it's your turn, your responsibility.

Take over.' -THOMPSON: Takes over.

ANDERSON: Yeah. -THOMPSON: Knows what to do.

ANDERSON: Knows what to do. They just look after that. Yeah. -THOMPSON: That's incredible.

ANDERSON: That's kind of the exciting part, is how smart these horses are.

You can really train a horse to do anything.

We could train it to fetch, if we wanted.

THOMPSON: Horses are so smart, they can learn to do things that go But it takes training.

We used to call it breaking a horse.

But that isn't it at all.

♪♪ ANDERSON: In the past, when we've talked about colt starting and colt breaking, that's what it was.

They wanted to get a job done, kinda just force everything onto this horse.

They expected the horse to jump; they expected the horse to rear, they expected 'im to buck, because there was no relationship.

Talk about breaking the spirit.

And, now, it's almost the opposite of what we're wanting now.

We want that spirit; we want that heart; we want that desire.

THOMPSON: I'm here to see Jimmy start a two-year-old colt called Shiver.

Until now, Shiver's only seen humans from a distance.

He's never been ridden.

[ Neighing ] [ Huffs ] [ Neighing ] ANDERSON: Now, what I'm gonna do is start workin' myself a bit closer to 'im.

THOMPSON: I've come for the week, but Jimmy figures he'll get a saddle on sooner than that.

[ Neighing ] That seems a little optimistic to me.

[ Neighing ] ANDERSON: And so... he's tryin'... [ Snorts, huffing ] There.

The-e-re we go.

You'll hear me talk about two eyes.

THOMPSON: Mm-hmm. -ANDERSON: When that horse can start to give me them two eyes, he also gives me his focus.

[ Huffs ] [ Snorts ] Ni-i-i-ce.

He needs to get used to this.

THOMPSON: If he can't take that touch, he won't take a saddle.

ANDERSON: [chuckling] No. We're getting him used to an external pressure.

Tap this hind end and have him yield that hind end.

Nice.

Tap this hind end... [ Huffing ] The-e-re.

Nice.

I'm gonna come up here, see if I can't get some pettin' in there.

[ Huffing ] [ Grumbles ] THOMPSON: Jimmy knows horses are prey animals.

Dogs are always looking for supper, but horses are looking for And that need is Jimmy's magic key.

[ Grumbling ] ANDERSON: When I look at horses that are spooky, if he's away from the herd, he doesn't have a leader.

When you get that trust and that confidence and that relationship with a horse, I mean, really, sky is the limit of what you can do.

[ Huffing ] When I start a colt, it's never a competition.

It's more of a partnership and a relationship that we can start to get workin' together.

I'm gonna come up here and, now, with the rope, I'm gonna move them hindquarters.

Move those hindquarters.

Move those hindquarters.

Nice.

[ Snorts ] [ Grumbling ] THOMPSON: How do you know how far to take it and when to stop?

ANDERSON: You know, we're lookin' at the expression in his face, lookin' at that tightness through his neck.

He's tellin' me, 'Jim, you can do more,' or 'Jim, I'm gettin' too worried.

I can't take this.'

So that's where I'm just readin' and lettin' And so, when I can go through this with him not gettin' worried and just no big deal, that's when it's gonna tell me he's ready to saddle.

[ Neighing ] [ Grumbling ] Now, he's gettin' good with the tarp.

Ni-i-i-ce.

Good boy.

THOMPSON: So what are you doin' now, Jim?

ANDERSON: I'm just bringin' Maverick in.

Maverick's gonna give him a little bit of confidence as I put the saddle on.

THOMPSON: And that's the first time?

ANDERSON: That's the first time, right there, yeah.

[ Neighing ] [ Grumbling ] [ Whinnying ] [ Grumbles ] And that is totally okay with me.

He kinda got worried.

He had to deal with it that way a little bit.

That's totally okay.

Yeah. There, he moved his feet, kinda tightened up, but come back.

And so, the next thing that I'm workin' here -- see, every time he stops, I want him to start to look for me.

The-e-e-re we go.

Ni-i-i-ce.

[ Birds squawking ] That's what I wanna see.

That focus, that lookin' to me for that answer.

THOMPSON: [chuckling] He's come a long way since morning.

ANDERSON: He's come a long ways, yeah.

[ Snuffling ] [ Birds chirping ] I need to get him used to me jumpin' up and down here 'cause, if I wanna get on him... [ Grumbling ] [ Grumbling ] Really, really good changes here.

[ Clucking ] [ Grumbles ] [ Poignant tune plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ THOMPSON: Just amazing.

Completely calm.

♪♪ ANDERSON: [Clucking] ♪♪ My partner's helpin' me.

THOMPSON: [Laughing] ANDERSON: [ Smooching ] Yeah.

[ Smooching ] ♪♪ [ Clucking ] -[Snorts] [ Smooching ] ♪♪ [ Smooching ] -[Whinnies] [ Smooching ] ♪♪ Nice.

THOMPSON: That was just superb.

That was incredible to watch.

ANDERSON: Good boy. You know, couldn't have asked for a better first day.

Good boy.

And here he is.

For the first time.

THOMPSON: He's your best friend now, isn't he?

ANDERSON: Yeah.

When I take the halter off, what I want to see is him not leavin' me.

[ Birds chirping ] [ Whistles ] His focus isn't there.

[ Grumbling ] Ni-i-i-ce.

Perfect. See? And I wanna be hooked up to these, not through a rope -THOMPSON: Yeah.

ANDERSON: or through manhandlin' or forcin', through their mind.

♪♪ THOMPSON: In a single morning, Jimmy and Shiver have found a common language.

♪♪ It's truly incredible, what we can do together when a horse agrees to trust in us.

♪♪ After all, we sit on a horse's back exactly where a wolf would've leapt up to attack.

It shows us: horses judge humans and some of us pass the test.

ANDERSON: Horses are really amazing, [ Lowing ] how much they will be a partner and they try a crazy amount and I wanna try that same amount back for them.

[ Lowing ] When they give me that much trust, I can never let anythin' bad happen to 'em.

When I lay Maverick down in the arena, he has given me his trust.

Maverick knows I won't let somethin' happen to him.

♪♪ THOMPSON: The more time I spend with horses, the more I understand what a gift they are.

A body loaded with the most amazing physical attributes, yet, also, a mind that connects with our own.

what makes our partnership unique.

But I wonder: How did it all begin?

[ Suspenseful music plays ] In the final episode, travel back in time and discover how horses sparked the beginning of art.

FLOSS: These guys had a spiritual connection with these animals.

Join me on a journey into the incredible world of horses today and be amazed at their diversity.

♪♪ [ Neighing ] From the coldest place on Earth to the hottest, and even to an uninhabited island where horses rely for survival on seals.

[ Poignant tune plays ] And learn why, no matter what, horses are here to stay.

RED CROW: We are still on our horses, just like our forefathers.

It's our way of life.

[ Music climbs ] THOMPSON: From their incredible power and speed to their intelligent and social nature, it's no surprise we built our world with horsepower.

ANDERSON: When you get that trust with a horse, sky is the limit of what you can do.

THOMPSON: But how did we shape this remarkable creature into the 350 breeds that exist today?

Let's take a global tour of the most fascinating members of the modern horse club.

[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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Equus "Story of the Horse: | Episode 1: Origins | Nature | PBS

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The relationship between man and his noble steed is almost as old as civilization itself, allowing our species to explore, conquer and flourish side by side with the horse. NATURE traces this revolutionizing partnership with anthropologist Niobe Thompson in this two-part series.

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The 12 Principles of Plant Biology

1. Plants use the same biological processes and biochemistry as microbes and animals. Yet plants are unique because they mix the sunlight's energy with chemicals for growth. This process of photosynthesis makes the world's supply of food and energy.

2. Plants require certain inorganic elements from soil for growth. Plants play an essential role in the circulation of these nutrients within the biosphere.

3. Land plants evolved from ocean-dwelling, algae-like ancestors, and plants have played a role in the evolution of life, including the addition of oxygen and ozone to the atmosphere.

4. Reproduction in flowering plants takes place sexually, resulting in the production of a seed. Reproduction can also occur via asexual propagation.

5. Plants, like animals and many microbes, respire and utilize energy to grow and reproduce.

6. Cell walls provide structural support for the plant and also provide fibers and building materials for humans, insects, birds and many other organisms.

7. Plants exhibit diversity in size and shape ranging from single cells to giant trees; there are ~350,000 plant species.

8. Plants are a primary source of fiber, medicines, and countless other important products in everyday use.

9. Plants, like animals, are subject to injury and death due to infectious diseases caused by microorganisms. Plants have unique ways to defend themselves against pests and diseases.

10. Water is the major molecule in plant cells and organs. It's essential to plant structure, growth, and the internal circulation of organic molecules and salts.

11. Plant growth and development are under the control of hormones and can be affected by external signals such as light, gravity, touch or environmental stresses.
12. Plants live in and adapt to a wide variety ofenvironments. Plants provide diverse habitats for birds, beneficial insects and other wildlife in ecosystems.

SPEAK to the world with the following 12 Principles of Plant Biology translations:

These translations coming soon: Arabic, Australian English, Bangla (Bengali), Bulgarian, Catalan, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

12 Inquiry-Based Labs to Explore the 12 Principles of Plant Biology

Each lab contains:

a concept summary relevant to a middle school audience

engaging photos to enhance understanding

tips for setting up and conducting student-driven investigations

specific teacher guidelines for sourcing materials, streamlining the process, and using additional research

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The 12 Principles of Plant Biology | American Society of Plant Biologists

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The 12 Principles of Plant Biology Plants use the same biological processes and biochemistry as microbes and animals. Yet plants are unique because they mix the sunlight's energy with chemicals for growth. This process of photosynthesis makes the world's supply of food and energy. Plants require certain inorganic elements from soil for growth.

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Lizard Evolution Virtual Lab | This interactive, modular lab explores the evolution of the anole lizards in the Caribbean through data collection and analysis.

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TIES Guided Lessons for Evolutionary Biology (Middle School) | Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science

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Has your school shut down due to the coronavirus? Looking for a unit on evolution your students can do on their own? Here is is! This unit should take a total 5-6 hours for students to complete. Email TIES Director Bertha Vazquez at bvazquez@centerforinquiry.org for the answer key and instructio ...

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To help you with your quest for fun and engaging content we created this toolbox. There are some quick links as well as a search tool that can direct teachers to the biology resource they need. We will continue to develop the page and welcome your feedback so we make it even better.

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After engaging in over 200 hours of professional development with national experts, we knew that in order to really understand how to bring NGSS to classrooms, teachers needed to experience the same productive struggle that kids do in an NGSS classroom. With that in mind, we formed the first storylining working group, which is open to anyone to join at any time. The group is led by Dr. Jason Crean and Mrs. Kristin Rademaker and meets once a month to maintain that open collaboration. We are able to offer Professional Development Credits to participants with an open-door policy.

We began this project with 3 goals in mind:

1. Train educators in three-dimensional learning, teaching, and coherent curricular design through sustained collaborative work and by both experiencing and doing it themselves;

2. Create coherent storylines, including embedded three-dimensional assessment pieces that will evolve over time through continuous feedback from pilot teachers; and most of all

3. Share our work- for teachers, by teachers, for free- with any stakeholders interested in making the fundamental shift towards a three-dimensional classroom.

Our first working group met in 2016 and included educators from 5 districts with a passion for figuring out how to bring the NGSS to classrooms. We've since grown to represent over 100 districts from across the state and country and are hoping to begin working groups for other content areas and grade bands soon!

Click on the photos in the slideshow below to access all of our storyline calendars in their google drives. Please note they are a work in progress and some are more complete than others, but we welcome your collaboration and feedback!
Contact us if you'd like more information, or would like to join a working group!

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Illinois Science Teaching Association - Storylining Working Group

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After engaging in over 200 hours of professional development with national experts, we knew that in order to really understand how to bring NGSS to classrooms, teachers needed to experience the same productive struggle that kids do in an NGSS classroom.

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Marathon Runner - Full Unit - New Visions Science Curriculum

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Teacher Materials provide the learning goals for the unit, guidance on when to use particular strategies, and an explanation of how to teach the unit in a way that is driven by student questions and ideas.

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Living Environment - New Visions Science Curriculum

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Science Curriculum & Professional Learning Team

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HS Earth and Space Science

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HS life science

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In Part 1, you examined the effects of genetics and environment on anal fin color in male bluefin killifish. The data from Becky's experiment showed that both genetics and environment work together to determine whether male offspring had blue, yellow, or red anal fins. You will now examine how the father's genetics, specifically their fin color pattern, affects anal fin color in their sons. When we factor in the genetics of the father, and not just the population he came from, does this influence our interpretation of the data?
The activities are as follows:

For her experiment, Becky collected male and female fish from both a swamp (26 Mile Bend) and a spring (Wakulla) population. Most of the males in the swamp have blue anal fins, but some have red or yellow. Most of the males from the spring have red or yellow anal fins, but some have blue. Becky decided to add data about the father's fin color pattern into her existing analysis from Part 1 to see how it affected her interpretation of the results.

In Part 1, Becky was looking at the genetics from the population level. Looking at the data this way, we saw parents from the 26 Mile Bend swamp population were more likely to have sons with blue anal fins than parents from the Wakulla spring. Parents from the 26 Mile Bend were also much more likely to have sons with higher levels of plasticity, meaning they responded more to the environment they were raised in. This means there was a big difference between the proportion sons with blue anal fins in the clear and brown water treatments.

Bringing in the color pattern of the fathers now allows Becky to look at the genetics from both the population and the individual level. From both the swamp and spring population, Becky collected males of all colors. Becky measured the color pattern of the fathers and recorded the color of their anal fins and the rear part of their dorsal fins. She used males that were red on the rear portion of the dorsal fin with a blue anal fin (rb), males that were red on both fins (rr), males that were yellow on both fins (yy), and males that were yellow on the rear portion of the dorsal fin with blue a blue anal fin (yb).

She randomly assigned each father's sons into one of the water treatments, either clear or brown water. Once the sons developed their fin colors, she recorded the anal fin color. This experimental design allowed her to test whether sons responded differently to the treatment depending on the genetics of their father. She thought that the anal fin color of the sons would be inherited genetically from the father, but would also respond plastically to the environment they were raised in. She predicted fathers with blue anal fins would be more likely to have sons with blue anal fins, especially if they were raised in the brown water treatment. She also predicted that fathers with red and yellow anal fins could have sons with blue anal fins if they were raised in the brown water treatment, but not as many as the blue fathers.
Featured scientist: Becky Fuller from The University of Illinois Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 10.9
About Becky: I consider myself to be an evolutionary biologist who studies fishes. I grew up in a small town riding horses in 4-H and working in a veterinary clinic. As an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, I was interested in biology and considering either medical or veterinary school. Two things led to me research in ecology and evolution. In the summer of 1991, I was taking courses at Cedar Point Biological Field Station which was run by the University of Nebraska. I met Dr. Anthony Joern (Tony) who was studying grasshopper community ecology. Tony hired me onto his field crew that summer after the courses were finished. I went on to do an undergraduate thesis under Tony's mentorship where I studied predation on grasshoppers. I caught the "science bug" and never looked back. Following my undergraduate work, I went to Uppsala University in Sweden on a Fulbright Scholarship. Here, I developed my love for fish and aquatics. I worked with Dr. Anders Berglund on pipefish in a fjord on the west coast of Sweden. Since then, I have had many wonderful advisers, instructors, mentors, and collaborators who have helped me develop skills along the numerous fronts required for a successful career in science. I consider myself very fortunate to have a job where I can do science and teach young, enthusiastic undergraduates.

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Why so blue? The determinants of color pattern in killifish, Part II

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In Part 1, you examined the effects of genetics and environment on anal fin color in male bluefin killifish. The data from Becky's experiment showed that both genetics and environment work together to determine whether male offspring had blue, yellow, or red anal fins.

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Oakland Unified Biology Scope and Sequence

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Oakland Unified Biology Scope and Sequence

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In this activity you will build a model greenhouse and explore light and temperature levels over the course of an artificial day.

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The Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry project engages students in STEM activities through the integrated use of technologies that include modeling, computational thinking, and real-time data acquisition. This comprehensive project will assist teachers in preparing diverse students for STEM careers by engaging them in exciting, inquiry-based science projects.

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The Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry project engages students in STEM activities through the integrated use of technologies that include modeling, computational thinking, and real-time data acquisition. This comprehensive project will assist teachers in preparing diverse students for STEM careers by engaging them in exciting, inquiry-based science projects.

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Lizard Evolution Virtual Lab | HHMI's BioInteractive

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The Lizard Evolution Virtual Lab was developed by a team of scientists, educators, graphic artists, and film makers to explore the evolution of the anole lizards in the Caribbean.

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It seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. To view this site, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options and try again.

Jump to main content

In this kinesthetic model, students will learn that plants need carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to carry out photosynthesis. Using ping pong balls and egg cartons, they will simulate the production of sugar molecules to store energy (photosynthesis), and then break apart these molecules to acquire energy (cellular respiration). This active simulation makes it easier to remember both processes!

egg cartons (6 per group)

ping-pong balls (36 per group)

"energy tokens" (24 per group)

three signs, one that says "stomata", one that says "stem", and one that says "lungs"

(optional) Travel Deep Inside a Leaf video to set the stage

In this role-playing skit your students will describe the various processes of the water cycle in the Amazon.

The Earth's tilt is the reason for the season!

How does the finite amount of carbon on this planet move around in the environment, from one place to another?

Ever wonder what nearly 40,000 animals are up to at night?

See what's revealed-every Thursday at NightLife. Sign up for event updates and exciting announcements.

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Modeling Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

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In this active model, students will simulate sugar molecule production to store energy-using ping pong balls!

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It seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. To view this site, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options and try again.

Jump to main content

In this active model, students will simulate sugar molecule production to store energy-using ping pong balls!

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Stay curious-every Thursday at NightLife. Sign up for event updates and exciting announcements.

(Because night owls know best.)

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Browse life science activities and lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms.

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By using two iconic mammals from Africa-the zebra and the buffalo-your students will review the functions of basic digestive organs. Then, step outside to compare these two digestive systems with a lively demonstration on the playground.

The Herbivore Digestive System Student Worksheet

Worksheet Answer Key

Two Strategies of Digestion in Hoofed Mammals Teacher Reference Sheet

overhead transparency

dry-erase markers

colored pencils or markers

jumbo sidewalk chalk (at least 5 pieces)

meter stick or measuring tape

hula hoops or colored ribbon, rope, or towels (optional)

1-L bottle (optional)

Graph Overhead (optional)

How much freshwater was used to produce your meal today?

Students will learn about real-world issues involved in making conservation plans to save endangered species.

Learn what it takes to develop, grow and consume some of the foods and water we need.

Ever wonder what 38,000 animals are up to after dark?

Stay curious-every Thursday at NightLife. Sign up for event updates and exciting announcements.

An adventure in your inbox. (And a discount, too.)

Sign up for the Academy's monthly newsletter and get a promo code for 10% off at our online retail store.

Now's a great time to start window-shopping at the Academy Store.

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How does the digestive system of a zebra differ from that of a buffalo?

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Scientists develop, revise, and use models to predict and explain phenomena. With SageModeler students can easily construct system models and validate their models by comparing outputs from their models with data from other sources, including scientific datasets, experimental data from probes, or data generated by simulations.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Curricular materials are available below. Sign up for access to comprehensive teacher guides.

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Scientists develop, revise, and use models to predict and explain phenomena. With SageModeler students can easily construct system models and validate their models by comparing outputs from their models with data from other sources, including scientific datasets, experimental data from probes, or data generated by simulations. Curricular materials are available below.

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Inside the stoma, there are cells with structures called chloroplasts, which is where the reactions associated with photosynthesis take place. The green pigment in chloroplasts is called chlorophyll; this is what makes plants look green and it is how plants capture the energy of the Sun.

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Use spinach

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Travel Deep Inside a Leaf | California Academy of Sciences

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Fermentation in a Bag- Measurement Alternatives

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Photosynthetic Floatation

Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)

Gram scale

Water

Liquid dish soap

Spoon or other implement (for mixing solution)

Soda straw or hole punch

Spinach leaves or ivy leaves

10-mL syringe (without a needle)

Clear plastic cup (1-cup size) or 250-mL beaker

Incandescent or 100-watt equivalent lightbulb in fixture (preferably with a clamp)

Timer

Notepaper and pencil (or similar) to record results

Optional: ring stand, foil, thermometer, ice, hot water, colored gel filters

Turn on the light, start a timer, and watch the leaf disks at the bottom of the cup. Notice any tiny bubbles forming around the edges and bottoms of the disks. After several minutes, the disks should begin floating to the top of the solution. Record the number of floating disks every minute, until all the disks are floating.

How long does it take for the first disk to float? How long does it take for half the disks to float? All the disks?

When all the disks have floated, try putting the cup in a dark cabinet or room, or cover the cup with aluminum foil. Check the cup after about fifteen minutes. What happens to the disks?

Plants occupy a fundamental part of the food chain and the carbon cycle due to their ability to carry out photosynthesis, the biochemical process of capturing and storing energy from the sun and matter from the air. At any given point in this experiment, the number of floating leaf disks is an indirect measurement of the net rate of photosynthesis.

In photosynthesis, plants use energy from the sun, water, and carbon dioxide (CO ₂) from the air to store carbon and energy in the form of glucose molecules. Oxygen gas (O ₂) is a byproduct of this reaction. Oxygen production by photosynthetic organisms explains why earth has an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

The equation for photosynthesis can be written as follows:

$$\ce{6CO2 + 6H2O + \text{light energy} -> C6H12O6 + 6O2}$$

In the leaf-disk assay, all of the components necessary for photosynthesis are present. The light source provides light energy, the solution provides water, and sodium bicarbonate provides dissolved CO ₂.

Plant material will generally float in water. This is because leaves have air in the spaces between cells, which helps them collect CO ₂ gas from their environment to use in photosynthesis. When you apply a gentle vacuum to the leaf disks in solution, this air is forced out and replaced with solution, causing the leaves to sink.

When you see tiny bubbles forming on the leaf disks during this experiment, you're actually observing the net production of O ₂ gas as a byproduct of photosynthesis. Accumulation of O ₂ on the disks causes them to float. The rate of production of O ₂ can be affected by the intensity of the light source, but there is a maximum rate after which more light energy will not increase photosynthesis.

To use the energy stored by photosynthesis, plants (like all other organisms with mitochondria) use the process of respiration, which is basically the reverse of photosynthesis. In respiration, glucose is broken down to produce energy that can be used by the cell, a reaction that uses O ₂ and produces CO ₂ as a byproduct. Because the leaf disks are living plant material that still require energy, they are simultaneously using O ₂ gas during respiration and producing O ₂ gas during photosynthesis. Therefore, the bubbles of O ₂ that you see represent the net products of photosynthesis, minus the O ₂ used by respiration.

When you put floating leaf disks in the dark, they will eventually sink. Without light energy, no photosynthesis will occur, so no more O ₂ gas will be produced. However, respiration continues in the dark, so the disks will use the accumulated O ₂ gas. They will also produce CO ₂ gas during respiration, but CO ₂ dissolves into the surrounding water much more easily than O ₂ gas does and isn't trapped in the interstitial spaces.

Try changing other factors that might affect photosynthesis and see what happens. How long does it take for the disks to float under different conditions? For example, you can compare the effects of different types of light sources-lower- or higher-wattage incandescent, fluorescent, or LED bulbs. You can change the temperature of the solution by placing the beaker in an ice bath or a larger container of hot water. You can increase or decrease the concentration of sodium bicarbonate in the solution, or eliminate it entirely. You can try to identify the range of wavelengths of light used in photosynthesis by wrapping and covering the beaker with colored gel filters that remove certain wavelengths.

This experiment is extremely amenable to manipulations, making it possible for students to design investigations that will quantify the effects of different variables on the rate of photosynthesis. It is helpful to have students familiar with the basic protocol prior to changing the experimental conditions.

Ask your students to think carefully about how to isolate one variable at a time. It is important to hold certain parts of the experimental setup constant-for example, the distance from the light source to the beaker, the type of light bulb used, the temperature of the solution, the height of the solution, and so on. Certain treatments may eliminate photosynthesis altogether-water with no bicarbonate, very low temperature, and total darkness.

A typical way to collect data in this assay is to record the number of disks floating at regular one-minute time intervals. This is easily graphed, with time on the x-axis and number of floaters on the y-axis.

To make comparisons between treatments, the number traditionally used is the time point at which half of the disks in the sample were floating, also known as the E50.

This experiment was originally described in Steucek, Guy L., Robert J. Hill, and Class/Summer 1982. 1985. "Photosynthesis I: An Assay Utilizing Leaf Disks." The American Biology Teacher, 47(2): 96-99.

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Photosynthetic Floatation Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) Gram scale Water Liquid dish soap Spoon or other implement (for mixing solution) Soda straw or hole punch Spinach leaves or ivy leaves 10-mL syringe (without a needle) Clear plastic cup (1-cup size) or 250-mL beaker Incandescent or 100-watt equivalent lightbulb in fixture (preferably with a clamp) Timer Notepaper and pencil (or similar) to record results Optional: ring stand, foil, thermometer, ice, hot water, colored gel filters Turn on the light, start a timer, and watch the leaf disks at the bottom of the cup.

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View the profile and 3D models by California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy). Exploring, explaining, and sustaining life since 1853.

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Templates, sentence frames, and other resources relating to increasing the use of the domains of language in the classroom.

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Resources by practice

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How to read standards and other helpful resources relating to the framework and standards.

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Questions, posters and other resources to drive the "big ideas" of science.

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Lesson Plans | California Current Ecosystem

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California Current Ecosystem (Oxygen Levels) (Grades 9-12). The purpose of this lesson to have students analyze CCE (California Current Ecosystem) data and be able to see the correlation between phytoplankton growth and dissolved oxygen in the ocean. (Jennifer Ogo, Kearny Mesa High School)

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Vertebrate Declines and the Sixth Mass Extinction | HHMI BioInteractive

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Project or distribute the image to engage students. The downloadable Educator Materials PDF, which includes background information, graph interpretation and discussion questions, and the Student Handout, which includes the image and background information, have been remediated to comply with Section 508 of the National Rehabilitation Act for accessibility and can be used with screen readers.

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Can Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Help Fight Disease?

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HS-LS1-6

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The science of macaroni salad: What's in a molecule? - Josh Kurz

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Also include the Jesus Christ lizard: https://youtu.be/45yabrnryXk

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Name: _______________________________________ Date ______

Investigation: How Does a Water Strider Stay on Top of the Water?

Introduction: The water strider can manage to slide along the surface of water while searching for other insects to eat. Watch this video: "Why Water Striders Make Terrible Lifeguards." (biol.co/wastride).

Surface tension refers to water's ability to "stick to itself". Water is sticky, but some things can affect the surface tension, like pollutants in the water. What do you think would happen if water had been contaminated with soap. Would the surface tension decrease, or would it increase? How would this change affect the animals that live in the water?
Experimental Question: How does soap affect the water's surface tension?

Develop a hypothesis that answers the experimental question. Write this statement below.

Procedure:Surface tension can be measured and observed by dropping water (drop by drop) onto a penny.

Experiment: Carefully use a dropper to place drops of water on a penny. Count how many drops of tap water can fit on your penny. Do four trials and take an average.

Repeat the process using water that has soap in it. Soap types can vary, your instructor will provide the soapy water (it may be dish soap, shampoo, or laundry soap.)

Organize Data - make a bar graph that compares the trials. Be sure to label your X and Y axis. Color is optional.

1. Write a sentence that explains how soap affects the surface tension of water based on the results of your experiment.

2. Identify the independent ( manipulated) variable and the dependent ( responding) variable in your penny experiment.

3. What was the control in the penny experiment? What is the purpose of this control?

4. What other questions can you develop (and even test) about surface tension. Write at least two follow-up questions that could be tested using the penny technique.

5. Consider the experimental question and how it relates to a water strider. What happens to water striders on lakes that have been contaminated with soapy? Make a CLAIM to answer this question and support your claim with EVIDENCE from the experiment you just conducted.

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Investigation: How Does a Water Strider Stay on Top of the Water?

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A version of the penny and surface tension lab that includes background about water striders and how they stay on top of the water. Students examine how soap my disrupt the surface tension of water by comparing the number of drops that fit on a penny.

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The Facts About Antibiotics in Meat - American Meat Institute

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Antibiotic Resistance - Evolution in Action

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Antibiotic Resistance - Evolution in Action

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Unit Plan

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Online Extras: Argument-Driven Inquiry in Biology

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If you have purchased the teacher’s edition of Argument-Driven Inquiry in Biology, you can view the accompanying images, spreadsheet, and lab handouts online. These resources are for your personal use only and are not to be redistributed.

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Resources: Food webs and keystone species

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Resources: Food webs and keystone species

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Videos, readings, activities

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Some Animals Are More Equal than Others: Keystone Species and Trophic Cascades

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The short film opens with two questions: "What determines how many species live in a given place? Or how many individuals of the species can live somewhere?" The research that provided answers to these questions was set in motion by key experiments by ecologists Robert Paine and James Estes.

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For thousands of years, Pikas (Ochotona princeps) thrived at Mount Lassen, but changes to their environment have put them at risk. Pikas are sensitive to environmental changes because they only thrive in cool climate where they can eat clovers. Changes to temperature or clover growth can be devastating. Use this ...

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Why Does Moist Baled and Stacked Hay Spontaneously Catch Fire?

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Corn Genetics and Chi Square Analysis.pdf

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Online Extras: Argument-Driven Inquiry in Biology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you have purchased the teacher’s edition of Argument-Driven Inquiry in Biology, you can view the accompanying images, spreadsheet, and lab handouts online. These resources are for your personal use only and are not to be redistributed.

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Slug Lab - Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers

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IV. Food Preferences of Slugs (continued): Students will also benefit from the opportunity to further practice their experimental design skills by looking more closely at the complex question of "How do you determine what a slug really likes?" This lab should be undertaken at a time of the year when slugs can be collected easily.

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Why Don't Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?

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This high school unit on natural selection and evolution starts out with students exploring the case of a young girl with a life-threatening infection of pan-resistant bacteria. This case sparks questions that lead them to investigate the growing prevalence of such cases and the discrepancies between antibiotic use in their communities and CDC recommendations.

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Scientists usually think of natural selection as a slow process, unfolding over generations of incremental change. But, as a study published today in Nature suggests, sometimes this system can take a more rapid approach, especially after a sudden event like a hurricane. As these disasters become more frequent thanks to anthropogenic climate change, understanding how hurricanes affect the species who live in the places they make landfall is vital. This study, which was mainly the result of good timing, offers evidence that, for one family of lizards at least, hurricanes may initiate a rapid natural selection process for certain traits.

Just four days before Hurricane Irma reached the Turks and Caicos in 2017, ecologist Colin Donihue completed a survey of the local anole species (Anolis scriptus, a family of lizards) on two remote islands. He was studying the lizards' physical characteristics ahead of a planned eradication effort on invasive black rats, and his team's plan was to return a few years after the eradication to see if the lizards had changed. But just six weeks later, after first Hurricane Irma and then Hurricane Maria ravaged the islands, Donihue found himself back at Pine Cay and Water Cay, repeating his survey. This time, the goal was to see if there were shared physical traits among anoles who survived the hurricanes.

On both islands, walking the same routes as they did in the original study, Donihue's team found that lizards with six to nine percent larger toe pads than average, short back legs, and long front legs were the ones who had been able to hold on. His team surveyed about 100 lizards.

Donihue and his coauthors believe this is evidence of natural selection-in other words, survival of the fittest, who then pass on their traits to their offspring. "It makes sense, especially because we saw the same pattern occur on both islands," says Donihue. However, because the experiment was originally designed to study change over a few years in different circumstances, they can't definitively rule out other possible explanations for the change, such as big-toed lizards being blown onto the islands from elsewhere.

After gathering field data, the researchers conducted some lab experiments with anoles who survived the storm to see how they behaved in hurricane-force winds, resulting in one of the bizarrest videos ever to hit the internet (at the time of publication, the GIF of this lizard is already captivating animal lovers worldwide.) They observed that the anoles placed themselves on the side of their perch that was protected from the wind and just hung on with their forelegs.

If natural selection is occurring, it's likely that a genetic shift in the lizards would be observable within a single generation, says anole evolutionary biologist Martha Muñoz. Muñoz, who was not involved with the research, says the study is in an "elite club" of scientific studies made possible by happenstance. It also offers further evidence for something that scientists have come to understand only in the past few decades, she says: "Evolution and natural selection is something you can observe in the wild in a very short span of time."

Hurricanes as a cause of natural selection would also explain some other observations that researchers studying anoles have noticed over the past half-century. There are more than 400 species of anoles living in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean Islands and they are widely studied. "There's been a long-standing mystery in anole biology about why the island fauna have such overbuilt toe pads relative to very similar species living on the mainland," says Donihue. "This hurricane result kind of gives us an inkling at a potential explanation to this decades-long mystery."

That result points to a possible wider pattern for islands that are intermittently visited by hurricanes: It's possible that these sporadic events have helped to shape the animals that live on these islands over generations, via natural selection. "This idea of connecting the dots between this microevolutionary events, these little natural selection moments, to much larger macroevolutionary patterns, is really an open question," says Donihue. Further, says Donihue's co-author, Jonathan Losos: the study "suggests there's another aspect to evolution that we don't understand." This is the first study to show that hurricanes have the potential to drive natural selection within a species rather than just wipe out members of the species indiscriminately, he says.

A next step will be figuring out how to study such events on purpose, rather than by accident as happened in this case. To conclusively show that natural selection is occurring and lizards with a certain body type are surviving at a higher rate, individual lizards will need to be tagged and studied before and after a hurricane, he says. Given the difficulty of predicting the paths and occurrences of hurricanes, that will take some work, and perhaps another bit of luck, but this study shows it might be worth the effort.

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Hurricanes may have made these lizards better huggers

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Scientists usually think of natural selection as a slow process, unfolding over generations of incremental change. But, as a study published today in Nature suggests, sometimes this system can take a more rapid approach, especially after a sudden event like a hurricane.

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All of the cases have been implemented in existing courses and subsequently refined. You can access the materials for each case study by clicking on the "Download Materials" button.

The case studies each contain the following items:

Instructor guide

PowerPoint slides with instructor notes

Videos with expert interviews

Suggestions for application activities

Read below for more about each case study and to access the materials.

Antibiotics in Animal Agriculture

As more consumers question how their food is produced, one industry practice is garnering more scrutiny - the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. This case study provides details pertaining to the science of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance. Students will examine the sources of controversy and learn how people process risks. Finally, they will gain a better understanding about the role of food marketing as it pertains to this issue and practice developing key messages for the industry.

Rural Community Resiliency

Approximately 95% of the land in the United States is classified as rural, but only 19% of the nation's population live in these areas. This case study uses the rural Florida coastal community of Apalachicola as an example of a resource-dependent community. Students will learn about the concept of rural community resiliency and discuss what this means in response to human and environmental factors. Particular emphasis is given to the role of interpersonal communication efforts to build coalitions among different organizations and agencies.

Blue Bell Ice Cream Recall

For more than a century, Blue Bell Creameries has been a beloved brand in Texas. A staple at many Southern meals, this brand of ice cream experienced its first major product recall in 2015. This case study introduces students to the recall situation and how brand reputation management played a part in Blue Bell's recovery. As students learn about the case, they will apply crisis communication strategies and write content for potential social media posts.

Invasive Species & Citrus Greening

At first, the introduction of a new species into an environment may not seem significant. However, invasive species can have significant and potentially disastrous effects on an ecosystem. This case study looks at how an invasive species has created a crisis for the Florida citrus industry in spreading citrus greening. Students learn more about how this issue is communicated to various stakeholders and potential solutions to mitigate the damage.

Water Conservation in Texas High Plains

Water is often the leading concern for agricultural producers. For those who farm on the Texas High Plains, this water is drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer. However, this vital source of irrigation water is currently being exhausted faster than it can be replaced. This case study helps students understand the significant role agriculture plans in the region and how organizations are encouraging the adoption of water conservation practices to address the aquifer's depletion. Students will learn about the diffusion of innovations theory and the fundamental principles of community-based social marketing as they pertain to communication efforts to influence behavior change.

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All of the cases have been implemented in existing courses and subsequently refined. You can access the materials for each case study by clicking on the "Download Materials" button. The case studies each contain the following items: Instructor guide PowerPoint slides with instructor notes Videos with expert interviews Suggestions for application activities Read below for...

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Classzone.com has been retired and is no longer accessible. Because of the age of this application, the programs supported by this platform are not able to benefit from the technological improvements in accessibility, security, and HMTL5 (non-Flash) that we have incorporated into our newer programs and platforms in recent years.

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Elodea - Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers

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This lab involves the qualitative measurement of the changes in carbon dioxide concentration associated with respiration and photosynthesis in the freshwater plant Elodea. Bromthymol blue is used as an indicator for the presence of CO2 in solution. When CO2 dissolves in water, carbonic acid is formed.

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2002 - 2003 Official Scientific Inquiry Scoring Guide.pdf

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In the 1950s, a group of ranchers were baffled when their sheep gave birth to one-eyed lambs.  

The strange case of the cyclops sheep:

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California Department of Food and Agriculture's Animal Health Branch's Newsletter.

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The beef cow-calf business is well adapted to small-scale and part-time farmers who have land suitable for pasture and hay production.

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Biology Climate Change Biodiversity Graph Analysis Activity.pdf

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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Three-Dimensional Science Assessments (image courtesy Achieve and Georgia Science Teachers Association) As Wisconsin implements new three-dimensional standards and assessments, educators will need to work together to understand what "three-dimensional" means for science instruction. Sharing initial resources and processes will be a critical piece of moving forward as a state.

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Pest and plant models, degree-days, and weather - UC Statewide IPM Program

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UC IPM offers interactive tools and models that can help you make pest management decisions based on conditions at your site.