Day at the Museum (and C.K. Choi Building!): Part I

My biology 11 class recently took a fieldtrip to the Beatty Biodiversity Museum and C.K. Choi Building at the University of British Columbia. Above is me pictured with my favourite specimen that I encountered at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum, a mounted northern pintail duckling (Anas acuta).

Here is the famous blue whale (in this case, Balaenoptera musculus musculus) skeleton hanging in the Atrium at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum. Its pectoral flipper is homologous to a human's arm, as it contains the same bones as our arm, merely modified in the whale's case into a flipper, as a result of their common ancestor with us also having the same bones as both us and whales do in their forelimbs.

   Here is the tooth of an extinct "megalodon" shark (Charcharodon megalodon).

The fossilised foot of the dinosaur Lambeosaurus.

My hair being chewed on by a sable antelope (Hippotragus niger spp.). Just kidding, it was mounted and behind glass!

Me with a mounted penguin (family
Spheniscidae), situated nearby the mounted sable antelope in the Museum.



Me with, from left to right, a preserved elephant shrew, baby crocodillian, and bat (family Macroscelididae, order Crocodilia, and order Chiroptera, respectively).

Me with the preserved wrasses and parrotfishes (families listed above).

And now for a picture from the C.K. Choi Building:

One of my partners in the biology 11 UBC fieldtrip scavenger hunt standing in front of one of the C.K. Choi Building's recycled brick walls.

Bug-eyeing

Here are two pictures of me with some beautiful preserved framed arthropods. The first is a picture of me with a frame containing assorted arthropods, and the second is of me with a frame containing strictly beautiful butterflies. Some of the arthropods pictured above include a stag beetle (family Lucanidae), a frog beetle (genus Sagra), and what is probably a jewel beetle (subfamily Cetoniinae).

Say Hello To My Little Friend 2

Here is a picture of me with a captive azure damselfish (Chrysiptera hemicyanea). Native to the tropical pacific ocean, damselfish like this one are usually small but surprisingly aggressive. Their aggressiveness, however, cannot save them from being the basis of a predatory food web of bigger animals on Pacific tropical reefs! The picture is somewhat blurred, as there is algae growing on the inside walls of the fish tank containing the fish and debris on the outside walls.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

A captive adult male green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis) rests in the shade. Green anoles are small, mainly insectivorous lizards, the only species of anole native to mainland North America. Although they look somewhat like geckos, they are actually more closely related to iguanas, an example of convergent evolution.