Curiosity Challenge: How Were Animals Created?

Hi there CSF followers, fans, and supporters!

Anna Bishop here again, answering an awesome biology question from Ava Hartshorn, Age 7: How Were Animals Created?

( a picture of animal cells under a microscope)

Well, it all started about 575 million years ago, a time called the Ediacaran Period, when primitive animals began to develop. Lumps of cells probably weren’t what you were thinking of when you thought of animals! But lumps of cells created the first animals on Earth. There are three educated guesses about how this happened.

Spider Superheroes

Hello CSF fans, followers, and supporters!

As the festival approaches, I was thinking about some of the awesome events we have going on just around the corner! Since this week’s theme is Earth and Nature, I was thinking about the Spider Superheroes event - an awesome, totally free event for Grades 1 to 4 at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History - all about spiders and the amazing things they can do.

Spiders are a special type of animal called an Arachnid that has eight jointed legs and lives mostly on land. They have inhabited Earth, as far as we know, for about 130 million years -- hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs. They are carnivores, and detect their prey with the small hairs on their legs and body. Their sense of touch is exquisite, and probably the inspiration for Spiderman’s “Spidey Sense”.

Most spiders catch their prey by spinning webs from sticky silk they secrete in glands called spinnerets, on the back of their abdomen. Those that don’t spin webs either hunt for their prey, or wait for prey to pass by them while they are hiding.