The freshman is culturing pond samples as part of his Apologia Biology course. In a few days we will be looking for members of the Kingdom Monera. Until then, we have to look at something, right?

I was pretty disgusted with a couple of the little creatures that we caught. I don’t like crawly things. I will work with them if I have to, but ewww. I didn’t mind the little black dots that were floating on top fof the water, so we all decided that we would look at those.

 

 

 This is your common water flea.  Well, a common, smashed water flea. My girl identified it for us using this website.  This is a very cool website, by the way.

 

 

 

 

Actually, we made a wonderful slide of another water flea. It was still alive even though we laid a coverslip over him to hold him still. We could see the heart beating and all the eggs in the brood pouch. It looked almost exactly like the one at the link. It was an exciting time at this house. Then, my girl changed magnification and forgot to lower the stage. oops. We then had a very crushed water flea. We weren’t able to get another specimen quite as nice.

The above picture is actually mine. I still don’t have a fancy camera and this was the best I could do under the circumstances. You can see the gut clearly and the antennae. Other than that, it is pretty smooshed. None of us were brave enough to grab one of the larger creepies, but that is OK. I am anxious to see what comes from our cultures.