As my Aunt would say, Heeeey Y'aaallll.  Today we are going to be talking about Sponges and Cnidarians(pronounced nidarians). Sponges and cnidarians are actually pretty cool creatures. Sponges are not the sponge you use in your kitchen sink, although they look very similar. Sponges are known as the vacuum of the sea because they suck in dirty water and then they push it back out clean of all the little micro-organisms. Cnidarians are a class all their own. These are the jelly fish, sea anemones, etc. They use little polyps full of poison to catch their food, although many do not contain enough of this toxin to injure a human. An interesting fact bout jellyfish is that they do not actually have a brain! They simply float along and the food kills itself.

I understand most of the concepts this chapter, but I need to work on my vocab and some of the information. I also need to get my Science Olympiad stuff together. I am building a home made hydrometer/salinometer.

We did a lab using the microscope. We viewed sponge and Hydra parts under the microscope. On Monday, apparently we are going to abuse a living hydra cnidarian and try to make it sting something. Oh boy! I feel bad for the little guy. Haha. We are not going to actually abuse it. Just poke it a little. I don't really know how well the bio-dome lab is doing. Lat I checked, the egg sacs were developing nicely. Thanks for reading. Be back next week!