Introducing: Horseshoe Crabs in the Classroom, Take 2


During the 2011/2012 school year, we had a program called Horseshoe Crabs in the Classroom at our elementary school. This program is offered through the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and it's a great idea for a number of reasons - letting kids learn about these incredible pre-dinosaur animals while, maybe, helping add a few more of these amazing animals to the Chesapeake Bay.

Last year, we ended up with no live horseshoe crabs (HSC) and I think this was because of over-zealousness on my part for ridding the aquarium of an unwanted fungus or at least what I thought was fungus. The 4th graders, though, were very enthusiastic and they learned a lot about the critters even though they never saw a live one in their classroom. Sigh.

This year, though, now that the teacher (me) is a bit more experienced, I think we'll have better luck. So here's Take 2...

Friday, July 6, 2012

July 6 - AMAZING larvae photos

So, this Nervous Nellie (uh, that would be me) looked in the tank today and saw a bunch of larvae floating on the surface and thought - omg! They're all dead!!! Get a grip, Ms. M. I took a spoonful out, took some photos and they started swimming around. OK. So they were just lolling around on the surface. No big deal. I also was worried about the sticks on the bottom thinking they were some kind of organism just waiting to burst forth into nasty little horseshoe crab eating monsters. I took some of them out and guess what? They were just little sticks. Woody things.





But the really awesome part of this post are the following 2 photos.

This is a photo of one larvae showing the eyes
(the 3 black spots) and the guts of the larvae (green). 










These 2 still images are from 2 digital photos I took on my Nikon D50. They are both a small piece of those pictures. Using iPhoto, I cropped them, then zoomed in on the image, and took a screen shot. Voila! Both of them show the yolk sac around the larvae - it's a bit pinkish. That's the source of the larvaes' nutrition after they have hatched.
You can also see the eyes in the top 2 larvae. The bottom
one gives an amazing view of the underside of the larvae


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