Penguins!!

We've got one last report to do before the semester ends, which is on animal behaviour. I think the subject Animal Systems will be better for me if it focuses more on animal behaviour rather than on agriculture. I know there are countless of people asking what do I study in this course? I think I will only explain Animal Systems as everyone should know what Biology, Chemistry and Zoology are.

Animal Systems is an Agricultural Science subject. We did a little bit on animal welfare, but most of the things we studied were about farming or pasture management, horse management, poultry, beef, dairy cattle, sheep and pig industries. It didn't really interest me much, not until the very last part of it which was about animal behaviour. We watched interesting video clips on animals and learned to observe their every movement. This module was the most interesting part of the subject. Love it!

So about the report, we had to do it in pairs and we had to observe and record the behaviours of any one animal. I paired with one of my closest coursemate, Meaghan (knew each other since orientation). At first we wanted to observe the geese at a park near her house, but it's a rainy week and the geese might not do much on rainy days. So we changed our mind to observe penguins at the Melbourne Aquarium.

We were required to observe for 3 hours but can split it into several intervals. However, I think we didn't observe for that long though. Hehe. The penguins are so CUTE!! In the enclosure, there were king penguins and gentoo penguins. The king penguins are slightly smaller than emporer penguins but they are still relatively fat and big and make me want to hug them so much.

We saw keepers feeding them. I wish I'm standing in their position. Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by cute and fat and clumsy penguins?

We managed to identify quite a lot of behaviours like scratching, preening, sleeping, swimming, vocalising, flirting, eating ice and even as simple as walking, resting and chasing. Now we have a hard time to actually describe their movement. Like, how do we describe this preening movement? Twist its head to the back and peck its butt?? @@" Or this. Bend its body and scratch its head with its toenails like a doggie??

Or when they were courting. Take a bow and say "I love you" ??
In the meantime, we went for a bottom glass boat tour. We went behind the scenes where they prepare the food and also where divers dive into the aquarium. The level below is where the visitors will pass by the aquariums. Now I know where they get in. Lol.

Then we went on to a boat to see the fishes from the top. They have names for the sharks and stingrays. Wonder how they recgonise them? One of the stingray doesn't have a tail which means it is defenceless, so it is the friendliest stingray in the aquarium. They said this stingray was found near the shore, already lost its tail and it's nicely cut. So they concluded that it was cut by a farmer or someone else.

This tooth belongs to a shark named Michell. Divers picked them up when they were cleaning the aquarium. It was quite sharp. Can use to stab people. Lol.Then, we went to looked around. A super big crab. Jellyfish.

Boxfishes.A super big lobster. Forgot what's the name.We didn't finish walking the whole aquarium because most of the time have already spent on the penguins and I had to go back before dark. So we left at around 4.15pm. It's so inconvenient when the sky gets dark so fast. =(

I took a picture of my dissection this week, the northern pacific seastar. It's easier than the snail one although it's a bit tiring when cutting it. Can see the stomach at the center (right one).