Animal Project Example

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]good morning I'm going to be giving my presentation on the long fin inshore squid um this is a picture of the beautiful organism um you can tell right away that there are some really cool things going on with their skin which we're going to talk about um they have very interesting eyes which hopefully I will also mention and we're going to just go through what makes this organism interesting and how it ties into the different things we've learned about in biology this year so the first thing I want to talk about is actually the squids embryo this is what an embryo of a 10day old squid looks like so this is um a very recently fertilized egg right and you can see that after 10 days um there's already a lot of characteristics that have been forming in this squid you can already see where their eyes will be you can see that they even already have suckers on each of their arms um so obviously that tells us that these squid embryos are going to develop very quickly um so what is the what is the importance of looking at embryos why do we do this um embryos are one of our evidences of evolution so by comparing the similarities we see between embryos it can show the Rel atness of different organisms so even though this embryo still has a bit of time to develop you can see that a lot of his body parts are still forming in this embryotic stage if you were to compare a squid embryo and a cuttlefish embryo or a octopus embryo you're going to see a lot of similarities between them because they are in the same class okay another thing that kind of has to do with Evolution are some of the adaptations that are found in these awesome squids the first adaptation I want to talk about are the beautiful cells that are found in their skin so if we go back to that first picture you can see all those beautiful little specks in their skin those are special cells called chromatophores chromatophores are pigment cells that are in the upper layer of the Squid's skin each of these cells has muscle fibers that are attached to the cells that can cause them to expand and shrink back down to get bigger and shrink back down um and what this allows the squid to do is change colors um and the purpose of changing colors is seen through natural selection because squids are able to change colors it makes them more likely to um be able to survive because changing colors allows them to blend in to find prey and also to scare away potential Predators because of being able to change colors um the next adaptation I want to talk about is how seapods which is the class of these organisms that includes the squids the Cuttlefish the octopi they have a specialized organ that is called the ink sac that secretes and creates this dark black ink and when the squid feels threatened they can actually Propel that ink out of their siphon and it will confuse predators to give them a chance to get away um so the first squid that had this adaptation was probably more likely to survive and reproduce so it continued to be passed to the Next Generation Um because it's an advantageous mutation um the next thing I want to talk about is the number of chromosomes that squids have squids have 46 chromosomes and that should make you think oh my gosh we have 46 chromosomes so squids have the same chromosome numbers as humans which is pretty crazy um octopus have 30 chromosomes so you can see that an octopus and a squid are clearly different species because they have different chromosome numbers um the next thing I would like to talk about with the squid would be their unique body part the unique body part I want to focus on is their beak so at the base of their arms and their tentacles they have a beak which is their mouth and its beak really looks like a parrot's um it looks like a parrot's beak and it has has a top and it has a bottom and they're surrounded by muscles at the base and it opens and closes and allows them to eat uh that beak is made of four organic materials it is made of protein it is made of kiten it is made of water and it is made of pigment um so let's start by talking about protein um it is made partially of protein the protein is found more at the tip of the beak and it is going to provide strength to that beak so that it can really break into things that they're eating proteins monomers are called amino acids so the building blocks of the protein are amino acids and the Order of those amino acids determines the proteins this beak is also made of a molecule called kiten kiten is actually a polysaccharide it's a carbohydrate it's a complex carb and it is found at the base of the beak um it's going to be a little bit more flexible than the protein would be it is a carbohydrate so it's a complex carb which means it's made of smaller carbohydrates which are called monosaccharides um the monosaccharide that makes kiten is called Amino glucose next we're going to talk about the role of a squid in the food web squids are carnivorous which means that squids only eat animals they do not eat plants um they can be a primary consumer because sometimes they are eat eating just the Plankton which are herb fores and they can also be a secondary consumer because sometimes they eat fish and fish would be a primary kit um squids are not aex Predators because there are some things that will eat squids such as us sharks large birds um will all eat squid so that's kind of where they fit into the food web it's a little bit of their Niche um remember Niche is a sum of all of the resources that a species uses and also how it contributes to the environment so this is kind of talking about the food it uses we'll talk about its habitat in a couple slides um the next thing I want to discuss is how humans have impacted squids one of the major ways that we impact squids is is by eating them um in 2021 it was totaled 23.4 million pounds of squid was um being fished by humans and it was valued at$ 33.4 million so humans do eat quite a bit of squid so that's one way that we're directly impacting them another way we impact them is just um any type of pollution found in the ocean will affect the squids it's either going to affect the things that they eat or it will affect the squids directly now let's talk about where you can find this specific species of squid the long fin inshore squid are found in the Atlantic Ocean ranging from New Foundland which is Way north of Florida and vuela which is way south of Florida um I've personally found them when I've been in Florida um the adult squids generally stay near the surface um of the water at night um but then they dive a little bit deeper down into the water during the day um and that kind of makes sense during the night time they're less visible to birds they can go a little bit higher up and do some fishing up towards the surface but during the night time they're more visible so they go a little bit further down so that kind of sums up their Niche a little bit talked about where they fit into the food web talked about their trophic levels talked about how humans impact them and where they're found in in the world um the last thing we need to talk about is any potential pathogens that can affect squid one thing that can make a squid sick is actually a type of parasitic worm um this parasitic worm is called the uncus worm it is a round worm that actually lives in the body cavity of the worm it's not often deadly to the squid but it can affect their health um especially with their muscles um the larvae of this worm will actually burrow into the muscle tissue of the squid which can cause muscle fatigue so it can kind of wear out their muscles and make them less efficient in their movement um because this is caused by a worm it is caused by a roundworm which are scientifically known as nematodes they are actually an animal and we know that all animals have eukaryotic cells so this anisus pathogen has eukaryotic cells meaning they would have a nucleus and then the last question we have to answer about it is is this zunic could this be passed from a squid to a human and the answer is yes if a human can consumes a squid that is raw or undercooked in any way then you could eat some of the larvae that have burrowed into the Squid's muscles and then those larvae can be passed into you um it causes a disease called anasasis um which normally have symptoms of abdominal pain your tummy's going to hurt nausea vomiting and you can find blood in the stool so hopefully that helps you guys know a little bit more about squids and their role in the ecosystem uh these are all of my sources where I found my information um and then I went and took that information I learned all about it and put it into my own words so that I could present that information to you which is what I want you to be doing okay please please please do not just pull up a website and start reading off of it because it'll be very obvious and it's just not going to sound natural it's not going to be a good presentation you can do interesting things in your video too if you want to include additional stuff other than the things that I've talked about feel free to um if you decide to do the extra credit and you make the model you could show off the model as part of your video I am so excited to watch your videos and see the creative unique things that you guys are going to do to incorporate into them um hope you have a great day and I hope this helps you guys um in the creation of your projects thanks