CC Life In The Universe Discussion

Part 1 Textbook questions

Chapter 4 #40, Chapter 6 #37, 41, and Chapter 7 #30.

Four questions in total. Just state your letter choice, no explanation needed.

Part 2 “Your Inner Fish”

This homework explores the deep connection between all life on Earth, but in a very specific and relevant way: it is about ourselves. The PBS documentary Your Inner Fish by Dr. Neil Shubin examines the remarkable connections between all vertebrate life (animals with backbones). From fish to felines, from gerbils to giraffes, from hummingbirds to humans – we have very similar genetics and anatomy. Please watch this documentary available at these sites:

“Your Inner Fish” on the PBS website (Links to an external site.)

“Your Inner Fish” on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biointeractive (Links to an external site.)

Then in four sentences tell me (i) something that you learned, and (ii) something that you liked (or disliked) about the documentary (e.g. what was your favorite part? Least favorite part?). That’s it – try to keep your answer to no more than four sentences. (Okay, you can have five sentences, but six is too much will cause a penalty.) This is a pretty easy assignment, but a very valuable one, now that we understand the common threads running thought all of terrestrial biology.

Of course, be sure to give your name, a title, and the date at the start of your answer, and a bibliography reference to the video. As usual, proper college-level English is required. Upload your homework to Canvas in .pdf format. Note: if you are not located in the US, you might not be able to watch the documentary on the above links. Contact me well before the assignment is due for assistance.

Extra Credit (worth 1-3 points): Tardigrades are often called the toughest animal on Earth, but there’s another animal that vies for that label: the rotifer. Watch the videos about tardigrades listed in Lecture Assignment #23, then read these two articles: Bdelloid rotifers – the world’s most radiation-resistant animals (Links to an external site.) and Bdelloids Surviving on Borrowed DNA (Links to an external site.). Which do you think is tougher, and why? As usual, cite your references including the tardigrade videos. Keep this to 1 page or less.

Link for the textbook

https://u1lib.org/book/5869408/ebf1d5