Day 59

Wednesday was another busy day that should have been spent at the beach, but instead I got a bank account and cleaned the aquarium's greenhouse again.  I'm pretty sure that I am the only person working in there, despite the fact that the aquarium has at least four volunteers.  Oh well!

Yesterday was more class, and today I had Venomous Australian Animals all day, which doesn't bother me because it's actually quite interesting.  We learned about snakes today and I must say that the snakes are another benefit of living in America, since we've only got a very few venomous snakes and they really aren't likely to kill you anyway.  Our scorpions are more deadly, though.  Take that, Australia!

Some snake venoms cause coagulation of the blood, which effectively creates blood clots that kill the prey by blocking bloodflow to the heart or lungs.  During the lab today we tested the effects of venoms on human blood plasma, graciously donated by our professor.  Even at minuscule concentrations the venom caused severe clotting within minutes.  A mere 100 nanograms of mulga (king brown snake) venom per millilitre of plasma can cause a fatal blood clot in humans.  After 15 minutes we were pulling gelatinous clots the size of BB shots out of the plasma.  They were pale orangey-beige and frankly they reminded me of boogers.

King Brown Snake , also known as a Mulga.  He just looks evil, doesn't he?
(Photo courtesy of Cool Companions.)

The average person has between 5-7 litres of blood, and only 55% of that is plasma, so you've got about 3 litres of plasma in you.  A mulga can produce up to 6mg of venom, but let's shoot low and say you get bit and the snake injects 3mg of venom into you.  So let's do the math:

Minimum concentration you're likely to get from a single bite: 1000 nanograms / millilitre
Concentration necessary to cause a blood clot within 15 minutes: 100 nanograms / millilitre

That's an order of ten difference.  Yikes.  And the best part?  If you miraculously manage to not die from a blood clot, you will begin to bleed from every orifice (including the bite holes) until you die.  All your clotting factors were just used up, so you are physically unable to stop bleeding.  Oh, and you're probably paralyzed this entire time.  Unsurprisingly, the king brown snake kills more people per year in Australia than any other species.

In other and more colourful news, I've got more photos from the aquarium!

The male and female clown fish mate for life.  These ones just laid eggs!  The eggs are the fuzzy things growing on the
rock, which the larger male is cleaning in this photo.

Mama clownfish!

Lionfish tail.  I like the scale pattern.  :)

I love to photograph seahorses because they never, ever move.

Snappy!  He's tiny, but I bet he could break skin with those wee-bitty teeth.

This anemone shrinks and grows very rapidly.  Sometimes you can't even find
it in the tank, and sometimes it's HUGE.  This is about medium-size.

Seahorse!

This is a mantis shrimp of some kind. 

This guy's scientific name is pretty fun to say: Lysiosquillina glabiuscula.

And now for my favorite: Mr. Peacock Mantis Shrimp.  He is very personable, and comes out to attack/greet everyone who walks by.  I love him.

Me:  "Oh hi there, Mr. Peacock Mantis Shrimp!"

Mr. Peacock Mantis Shrimp:  "Who, me?"

Me:  "Of course!  You're my my favorite because you're so pretty!"

Mr. Peacock Mantis Shrimp:  "Oh stop, you're making me blush."

Me:  "Sorry bud, I have to leave now!"
Mr. Peacock Mantis Shrimp:  *sad*

 True story, folks.

Day 56

Remember how I finally got permission to take photos at the aquarium?  Today I made good on that and took a few practice shots to see how they would turn out.  The verdict: not very good.  I've got a rubber lens hood, which definitely helped.  Major problems were dirty glass, gunk in the water, moving/hiding animals, and the animals being too close to the lens.  Tomorrow I'll bring a flashlight as a sort of external light source to see if that helps.  They have some really cool stuff in there and I want to make sure I get photos of everything for my collection!

Here's the two decent shots I took today:

It's a leaf scorpionfish!  These guys are cool because they can be almost any colour.  You'll find them in pink, green,
yellow, brown--literally any colour, and they're all the same species.  That is seriously cool!

Peacock mantis shrimp!  This guy is beautiful, but aggressive.  They're great pets because they will interact with you
(by trying to attack you) but they'll eat your other fish, so they have to stay in solitary tanks.  This guy actually
'attacked' me while I was taking his photo today!

Hopefully I'll get more good ones in the near future!

-Ashton

Day 53

This week has been busy and full of work.  I had to write an unbelievably boring and pointless lab report about our trip to Green Island.  The island was great, but not because of the sciencey bit we did.  An entire page of my report was dedicated to the inherent problems with our method, the insignificance of our data, and the realization that we could conclude nothing from the experiment.  I have a feeling that wasn't what my instructor wanted, but none of it is wrong, and my strong science ethic makes it impossible for me to conclude something from nothing!  But I've still got another lab report, two essays, an online midterm (that will actually be hard because it's about plants) and some other miscellaneous work.

But enough about the less-than-exciting aspects of studying abroad.  Some good things happened this week!  I learned that in two weeks I'll be going to Undara on a field trip!  Undara is where the ancient underground lava tubes are located!  I'm very excited about checking those out.  I hope we'll have time to explore on our own.  (Good thing I've got a headlamp!)

I also started 'work' today, but I don't think it went very well.  My job was to go around talking to the vendors at the Esplanade market, trying to get them to sign up for an online marketplace website.  I wasn't obnoxious about it, and most people were at least willing to hear my spiel.  A few people were rude, but for the most part it wasn't bad.  I got to talking with several of the artists, and I actually learned quite a lot of artsy stuff today, from glass-blowing techniques to dying methods and a bit of pottery advice.  I've got a whole list of new crafts to try once I get home--I'm sure my mother will be thrilled.  :)

After the market, I wandered around town looking for sushi and wine.  (Not together, mind you.)  I ended up in several Japanese tourist shops--there seem to be an abundance of these around here, manned by Japanese people and with signs written only in Japanese--and they have some weird stuff.  See for yourself.

This was advertised as a 'toad leather coin purse.'  You open the mouth and put your change into the stomach.
Personally this was a little too morbid for my taste but to each their own, right?

OH MY GOD WHY

Phew.  This is MUCH better.  I would have eaten here, but it was closed.

This wasn't in a shop but I found it pretty curious.  Look at the grass beneath this tree.  It's not grass at all--it's astroturf.  The other trees around had natural grass, but not this guy.  I wonder what happened that they decided to install astroturf here?

A little weird.

I never did find any sushi (everything is closed on the weekend) but I did find the liquor store.  I have made it my goal to try every wine that costs less than $5.  There are quite a few of them and they actually taste great by my poor-college-student tastes!  There is even a bottle for $2.97, but I'm saving the best for last.  (And by 'best' I mean 'worst.')  I also made it to Woolies (the grocery store) before the bus came and got a new kind of chocolate!

This could be very good, or very bad.  It looks toxic from the photo.
I think if it were any greener, it would be glowing.  

Uhh, still looks pretty toxic.  Fortunately it tastes pretty darn amazing, so I guess if I grow a third arm after eating
it, that's okay.  (Also, it does NOT glow in the dark.  I checked.)

I've finally gotten permission to photograph stuff at the aquarium, so hopefully I should be able to get some good photos soon!  :)

Cheers,
Ashton