Insect eggs can be quite mysterious and amazing.
Unfortunately these photos don’t show well, but the eggs are covered with ridges and grooves, and sparkle with minature rainbows.
We found them attached to an acacia leaf. The next day they hatched into tiny caterpillars.
Have you ever found insect eggs? Try looking at some under a magnifying lens or microscope.
Edit: If you want to see what these eggs hatched into, check here.
If you liked the beach science activities from this summer, you might also be interested in learning more about dolphins.
Winter’s Tail is a new children’s book coming out in October. It is the heartrending story of a young dolphin named Winter who lost her tail after becoming entangled in a crab trap line. After she healed, she was fitted with a prosthetic tail.
Scholastic and Turtle Pond Interactive have put together some activities to coincide with the book’s debut. You can see a short video introduction (Note: the video shows a mauled tail ), and find teaching materials at http://www.scholastic.com/winterstail/.
One of the events will be a webcast of a virtual field trip to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Clearwater Florida on Wednesday, October 7, from 1:00 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time).
Check out the science activities included in the educational materials.
There’s also an excerpt of the Winter’s Tail book.
Winter’s Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned To Swim Again
by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff and Craig Hatkoff
Because we were eager to participate in International Rock Flipping Day, we peeked under some rocks in our yard this morning.
Flipping rocks was somewhat disappointing at first. It has been the third driest summer on record in central Arizona, and because the summer is when we normally get most of our precipitation, we are really dry. The terms dry as a bone, parched, and desiccated come to mind. Most of the rocks we looked under would normally have isopods (rolypolies), ants or earwigs, but we didn’t see any of those. Occasionally we might see a scorpion. We didn’t see any of those either.
What we did find was this:
Any ideas what might cause these white tunnels? I’ll give you a hint:Â it isn’t a type of spider, although it is made of silk.
In fact, the tunnels are made by an insect. Here are some photos I took of one earlier this summer.
Does anyone remember what it was?
(If you want to find out the answer, check this previous post.)
All in all, we saw something we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, and realized how much the lack of rain is changing the environment for even tiny things that live under rocks. And best of all, we got outside and had some fun.
What did you find?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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