Science Festival // creation corner

Hey everybody,
Yesterday, mommy took me and my two younger siblings to a science festival. We got there somewhere around 11:30 (it started at 10:00 and ended at 2.). It was almost like a convention in that there were lots of different booths. At one science booth, we stopped to look at different things under the microscope. The plant that fascinated me most was this flower.

When I looked at the middle dark part of the flower, this is what it looked like:                 

The middle part is actually made up of lots of little flowers!!!! Isn't that cool?!!! I never knew that. I always thought pollen was in the middle of the flower!!! This plant shows the creative and amazing design of our marvelous Creator. :) 
Then, at the next booth, people had hissing cockroaches from Madagascar!! 

They put 6 cockroaches in 6 different slots, and a couple of the cockroaches ran as fast as they could to the end, where a skittle awaited them. :) Yes, these cockroaches eat skittles! Here's a picture of a cockroach at the finish line.He was actually trying to climb out. None of the cockroaches ate the skittles while we were watching them.

There was a bucket with quite a few cockroaches in it, and if you wanted to, you could hold one. They are quite big and scary looking. Yes, I did hold one!! :) I had a glove on, but I could still feel it tickling my hand. I pushed on it's back a little bit to see if it would hiss. He didn't want to, but I heard another one hissing. They not only look scary, but sound scary, too!! Cockroaches are another one of God's amazing designs. They live on every continent, even Antarctica, but they are native to Madagascar. They don't have wings and the males have a pair of horns on their head to fight other males. Male hissing cockroaches are very territorial and use their horns in combat.

Hissing is used to startle predators and it's also used to attract a mate. The cockroaches force air out of their abdominal air holes, called spiracles. They  produce two kinds of hisses: upon reaching a certain developmental stage, all hissing cockroaches can produce the disturbance hiss, but only males ever emit the fighting hiss. Their hiss is 90 decibels, which is equivalent to the sound made by a lawnmower or hair dryer! 

Hissing Cockroaches live 2 to 5 years and eat leaf litter and fallen fruit.
Here are some more pictures of them.

 These cockroaches have paint on their heads. (No, this is not me holding a cockroach on my bare hand. :) This is a picture of what a plain cockroach looks like.


There was also a booth that had baby seahorses swimming around in a bucket!! I have always wanted to have a seahorse for my pet. They're so cute!! Here are a couple of pictures. Sorry they're blurry. 

Here are some neat facts about the seahorse:

• Seahorses have excellent eyesight and are able to work independently on either side of their head. That means they can look backwards and forwards at the same time! :) That's pretty cool. Their eyesight helps them alot as they hunt for food.  

  

•  Seahorses have long thin snouts enabling them to probe into nooks and crannies for food. When they find food they suck it up through their snouts like a vacuum cleaner. Their snouts can expand if their prey is larger than the snout. They are not able to chew and have to disintegrate the food as they eat it.

  

•  Seahorses eat small crustaceans such as Mysis Shrimp. An adult eats 30-50 times a day. Seahorse fry, which is baby seahorses, eat a staggering 3,000 pieces of food per day.
• Females have a territory of about 1.4 sq meters and males have a territory of about 0.5 sq meters.

•  Seahorses pair for life. (When I read that, I thought of the anglerfish. They stick to each other for life, too. ) They meet first thing in the morning to reinforce their pair bonding with an elaborate courtship display. The female meets the male in his territory and as they approach each other, they change color. The male circles around the female and the pair often spiral around an object. This display can last up to an hour, then the female goes back to her territory. 

 

•  The male is the only creature where the male has a true reversed pregnancy. The female transfers her eggs to the male, which he self fertilizes in his pouch. The number of eggs can vary from 50-150 for smaller species and up to 1,500 eggs for larger species. The babies receive everything they need in the pouch from oxygen to food. Gestation time varies from 14 days to 4 weeks. 
   

• Baby seahorses are known as fry and when they are born, they're totally on their own. They spend the first two to three weeks of their lives drifting along in the plankton layer of the ocean. Due to predators, only like, 1 in 1,000 survive. 
• Seahorses have a prehensile tail. This allows them to grip onto eel grass and other weeds and prevents them from being washed away by strong currents and waves.

 

• Seahorses can change color very quickly and match any surroundings in which it finds itself. They have even been known to turn bright red to match floating debris. 

 

• Unlike most other fish, seahorses have an exo-skeleton. Their bodies are made up of hard, external, bony plates that are fused together with a fleshy covering. They don't have scales.
• Seahorses are poor swimmers. They rely on their dorsal fin beating at 30-70 times per second to propel it along. Pectoral fins either side of the head help with stability and steering.
• Seahorses are able to grow fleshy appendages called cirri on their bodies. This gives them a weed like appearance and helps with camouflage.

 

• Seahorses live in shallow weedy areas especially eel grass beds. In winter they move into deeper waters to escape the rough weather.

 I hope you enjoyed the little science lessons about the cockroaches and the seahorses. My favorite part about the seahorse is that the dad carries the eggs around! These animals truly show the ingenuity of the Lord!

Saying of the week:
 
 





























Bible verse of the week:
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." 

Have a fabulous, good and godly week everyone!!!
In the name of our omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent,transcendent, immutable, Lord and Saviour,
Ashley :)