Demonstration Animals Extraordinaire
Animals Extraordinaire
Animals Extraordinaire
Introduction
In this demonstration, students explore some of the planet's most impressive and most unique animals!
Every living organism is uniquely specialized for the environment it lives in and for life it leads. We often think of animals with simple traits as being less complex. But even simple-looking animals have evolved features that enable them to succeed in their particular environment. Pill bugs, for example, can be found in almost every type of environment on Earth, including the Arctic. Each species of pill bug has developed features to survive in these vastly different environments. Pill bugs have been around for several millions of years, outdating humans by far!
Special characteristics that enable plants and animals to survive in their surroundings may be used for:
- defence
- feeding and drinking water
- reproduction
- weather protection
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Compare and contrast the features of a variety of animals.
Entire Activity
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Other Resources
Full Lesson | Survival Strategies
In this demonstration, students discover how the structure and placement of the eyes creates depth perception.
Depth perception occurs as your brain compares the pictures received in each eye to figure out how far objects are from you. Each eye sees a slightly different picture because they’re in slightly different places.
If you use first one eye then the other to view an object, nearby objects tend to jump back and forth more, whereas faraway objects hardly seem to move at all.
In the first part of the demonstration, one eye sees the object covered by the index finger. The other eye has an unobstructed view. This demonstrates that each eye is getting a different picture of the world.
Single image random dot stereograms are the original versions of the popular ’Magic Eye’ pictures in which a 3D image pops out from what appears to be a sheet of random dots. The dots are arranged in repeating pattern, with slight differences in each repetition. Each eye sees a slightly different pattern because of the different angles between the page and each eye. Your brain tries to overlap the two patterns, and creates the virtual 3D object.