Phragmatopoma Californica

This last week in lab, we dissected the sandcastle worm.

They build and live in huge colonies of little parallel tubes made of sand and an underwater glue they produce. They actually sort through grains of sand and keep only the best ones for constructing their tube... Not really sure what qualifies one grain of sand to be better than the next but its very interesting to think about!

Now for something I am very excited about!

 I took pictures through my microscope... You better be excited because I am very proud of my efforts. I am now officially that weird girl who takes pictures of her dead mutilated squishy critters in lab... 

But seriously! How cool are these pictures!

This is the worms face

This is a dorsal view of the anterior end. Basically the back of the head and upper body. All of those bristles are the worm's gills. 

This was a shorter lab this week (Thankfully!) and we only had to make one cut. It was a vertical cut down the middle. It is so hard to make cuts on something so small! And I'm impatient on top of that! I pretty much completely cut my worm in half. Also, worms have hemoglobin like humans do, so they have red blood. It wasn't a very pretty site and I didn't take any pictures of it. Sorry!

Next week we are going to go hunting for bugs outside to be our next victims.