Käyttäjän carrmn päiväkirja

Today was a very cloudy day for my nature walk. With an average temperature of 46 degrees Fahrenheit, and some rain towards the end of my walk, I set out to find insects. However, this was mostly unsuccessful. Many places during the summer that I would typically find many insects and animals, I was unable to locate almost any as the winter months approach. A difficulty I faced was that many insects I was able to find were in leaf piles. However, they were too fast to move out of the camera view the second I was able to spot them. In fact, the only reason I was able to get a photo of one was because it had crawled on my shoe. In addition, I was able to spot a couple squirrels, but had to stay very still in order to capture a picture of them as they were very quick to run away. This behavior that I saw with both the insect and squirrel reminded me of the constitutive defense called escape behavior. They have evolved so that their musculature allows them to move very fast. Overall, this walk was a great way to see some real life examples of defense behavior from our ecology unit.