BIOLOGY OF DANCE!

Today I traveled with Carly to a dance competition. I learned how dance is greatly related to Biology and how the body works. First I learn the body moves while dance as a result of muscular and skeletal systems working together. The dancer’s bones gave them a sturdy border which muscles attach too. Also did you know there are 206 bones in the body? Dance utilizes move most bones in the “appendicular skeleton” which is the bones in the arms, legs, collar bone, shoulder blades and pelvis.

Also, I learned by watching various dances about joints which is where two bones meet. Some are immovable, slightly moveable, or moveable. There are various types of joints listed below (each joint helps the body move in various directions and complete the dance move)

- hinge (elbow knee)

- ball & socket (shoulder hip)

- gliding (joints in foot + wrist)

- pivot (two vertebrae inside head)

-saddle (base of thumb)

Another important part of the body is the muscles while you dance! The 650 muscles in your body give us the strength we need in dance. The muscles are attached to bones and connect over joins allowing the joints to bend!

In a dance competition, judges look to see if the dancers’ feet are pointed! There are 26 separate bones in the foot The brain sends the message to point your feet through nerves to the muscles. From there, the ankle joint straightens.

Overall, I learned a great amount at the dance competition with Carly! The body is made up of many complex parts which helps a dancer move the way she does. I was shocked how greatly biology effects dancing!

Amazon Rain Forest 2009

As you might know, the Santos clan went on an expedition to the Peruvian Amazon last spring. Before they left, PJ packed me neatly in his suit case, and that's where I spent the entire trip: IN HIS SUITCASE. This year, Johanna, looking to give me a biology experience in the rain forest, put me in a few photos, and PJ? Well, let's just say he got some Wilhelmina Karma when a tailless whip scorpion crawled up his arm. It got all the way to the back of his neck!

All that happened to Johanna is she had a not poisonous frog jump on her hat, though she did hold some of the poisonous ones. they only kill if you get the poison in your mouth or eye. She let me touch a frog too!

There were animals everywhere, here I am in a tree next to a Tarantula and a squirrel monkey. It was so cute (the monkey)!

My favorite monkey there though was the pygmy marmoset. They are the smallest primates in the world. Johanna tells me that the locals call them "leoncitos"because they have a little mane around their faces. A few days into the trip, the Santos family traveled about an hour upriver to the primate research station where biologists often come to do research. Unfortunately there were no biologists there at the time. The scientists set up a grid system that maps out the section of the rain forest. The owners of the lodge and the research center pay natives in the area to travel around the territory every so often and record what they find in each coordinate (bottom right).

The guide who was staying at the center said that the only animal he hadn't seen yet was a jaguar. That would be really cool to see. As Johanna put me in one last picture of the river, i thought about what a great, biology filled trip this was, even just in virtual form, and Johanna said she enjoyed this so much that she might even send me to the Galapagos islands where she went in 2007. I can't wait!