Some fantastic jelly-fish answers

Do you think that the polyp form or the medusa form was the common stage in the cnidarian ancestor? Explain your answer.

-Ancestors must have come up with a plan where conditions were tough to avoid extinction- produce medusa
-Polyps come up with a very clever plan
-Scientifically it is more ethical to say the polyp stage is common to the ancestor cnidaria.

Compare and contrast the feeding behaviour of Hydra and Planaria.

-Hydra-hostile, Planaria-gracile
-Planaria are autotrophic
-Planaria embark on a journey for food.
-Planaria have a blood circulatory system.
-They have a blood transport system so that you can live on land.
-In conclusion the feeding behaviour has been compared and contrasted and a summary (in table form) has been made for convenience.
-The planarians outer layer is very choosy in allowing diffusion of gases.

Instead of having pluripotent cells, would it have been better for these phyla to have specialised cells or a blood transport system? Justify your answer (5 marks)

-Pluripotent cells might forget about producing sex cells
-The cells will able to focus in their function if they are for protection and wont have to sense as pluripotent cells would to know what’s wrong they just perform the function immediately after realising the problem,.

Perhaps worms are multidimensional beings...?

IT's the only explanation I can think of to account for worms occupying the eggs they hold inside them...!

Why are female round worms larger than males?


-I think it’s because the females contain A’s, so they can be able to produce a lot (female gametes have XX)
-Females need capacity to occupy the eggs they produce.
-Female roundworms carry the babies.

When tests go wrong

20% of my students misinterpreted the essay question on "Taxonomy as destiny" and wrote pages of crap about "Taxonomy as DENSITY".


*Slaps forehead in dispair*


There is only so much you can help them (the essay counted 60% of the test mark allocation too...)

... and you're going to WHAT?

This question was posed to a first aid instructor by a medic student...

So, I've heard that water contains lots of dissolved oxygen. Can I give it to a person who a) isn't breathing and b) has no pulse?

Answer: NOOOOO! The person is technically dead!!!!!!!

Because everyone knows where shopping malls are...

In a study site description for a scientific report:

'The study site was located about 1 kilometre away from The Cascades'

Yes, and I presume you went to school somewhere between the Pavilion and Gateway...

When in doubt, write something unbelievably dumb...

In a table on flower structure, a 2nd year university student wrote the following:

Q: Corolla [of flower]: Present/Absent

A: Yes

Courtesy of Dr Anonymous

Explain, with the aid of a fully-labeled diagram, how changes in levels of a condition typically influence the function of organisms.


“Conditions was something that has influenced the functioning of organisms since decades. Long-ago, temperatures were low as compared to now…” [yeah OK, whatever man]




Distinguish between four types of predators classified according to their functional characteristics (i.e. not by the types of prey they eat), and give an example of each.


“Herbivores - those type of predators doesn't kill the prey but it eats it piece by piece (frequently) that might be the same species or different species. e.g. goats eating grass. True predators - predators that kill the prey doesn't affect it pieces by piece but just kills it one time. e.g. lion eating zebras” [eish! mebbe I fail this ONE TIME]


“Parasitoids: Feed of host, which they then kill for only a part of their life cycle” [and then spend the other part reviving it?]



Explain the differences between resource-weighted density, organism-weighted density, and exploitation pressure, and why ecologists find it useful to distinguish between these different expressions of density.


“It is quite useful…Each individual experience different factors due to its fitness, leading to darwins theory of natural selection”