Bella's World

  Above we have a squid and a snail.  I'm sure when you think of a squid you think of a big, slimy, deep sea creature that used to terrorize pirates and take down large ships in fairy tales.  When you think of a snail you also probably think slimy, but small and slow, a harmless creature that likes to hide in a shell and graze on your vegetable garden. The slime factor isn't the only thing they have in common.  Snails ancestors are one of the oldest known animals in the world.  There is fossil evidence that their ancestor gastropods date back to around 500 million years ago!!  Although snails are gastropods and squids are cephalopods, they are both mollusks.  This means they both lack an inner skeleton.  Squid ancestors have also been know to date back pretty far in history.  Ancestors of the squid known as ammonites date back to about 400-65 million years ago, they swam underwater like squids and they had shells just like snails! The ammonit...

  What do you think of when you think of evolution? During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, there was a boom in geology and evolutionary theory.  Today scientists base their theories and discussions off of naturalists and theorists from the nineteenth century.  Many people were involved in the evolution of evolutionary theory.      Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English economist.  Malthus was known for his theory that the population of man kind may grow, but that doesn't mean its resources grow with it.  He noted that food and water supply for humans would mean constant worry and fear that we run out as our population continues to grow.     He wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population , then published it in 1798.  He never wrote about species change like Charles Darwin or Alfred Russel Wallace which makes it hard to understand why Malthus would have such an influence over both of their studies of evolu...

   If I could only bring two items with me to a desert island, I would probably want to bring a boat and gas for the boat....so I could leave.  Of course that seems like the easy way out.  I realize a lot of people answer this question thinking about how to survive on the island, but I like to think about what I would need to get off the island.  If I can't bring a boat, and gas for my boat, I would probably bring a multi-tool to use to turn trees on the island into a raft, and some sort of radio or device that would work to call for help.  If I were really stranded and I hoped to find two items just laying about waiting for me, I would hope to find a fishing rod or fishing net and maybe something to make shelter with, like a tarp. It's all about survival right? What two items would you bring?