Coming into the lab the next day I began by helping to grab a few lab specimens from their tanks. These four Sea Hares are who we’re gonna be testing today. As i walked in I saw this picture of a labeled Sea Hare and I decided to take a picture of it so that I could refer back to it in the future since Latin scientific terms were not my strong suit yet I knew it was going to be a must in the classroom.
Sea hare labeled
after grabbing the Sea Hares I observed how to make a seaweed extract. This was going to be used during the experiments to induce feeding time for the Sea Hares pre and post feeding experiments .
Seaweed Extract
Injecting serum
once all of the prep work was complete we took each individual Hare and flipped a coin to determine which were to be injected with a blue serum as the experimental group and which were going to be the controlled group, just like in any other science experiment. we then had to wait 30 minutes for the Hares to calm down from this ordeal.
during this time we saw another researcher who was impaling a Sea Hares nerve cells to input electric signals and read their output as to how much nano volts it would take to make each individual cell to fire.
watching cells being impaled
Once this last wait period was over we were finally ready to begin the experiment we began by disrupting each Hare with ten tiny electric pulses which caused them to ink. again we waited two hours for them to calm down but not too long so they would forget and we then tested their eating responses.
Sea Hare Ink after shock was conducted.
the feeding test was five minutes long to see if their biting has increased from the first feeding test done before the snails were injected, if the bites stayed the same or went up the experiment was a success.
Sea Hare in its Seaweed Margarita-ville
each feeding test was recorded, timed, and bites were recorded for errors.
Overall today was an amazing day seeing first hand experiments and understanding how timing is everything. neatness is key and how to best control multiple aspects of the experiment so we do not have multiple variables for one experiment.