Whats that animal?!

The first action project of the year for our STEAM class, population. In the first unit of this class we talked a lot about taxonomy set language. For this action project we were tasked with choosing an animal and finding its taxonomy, comparing it to the taxonomy of other animals, and create a mosaic of the animal we chose. For this particular project I chose to study the meerkat.

Meerkats, or Suricata suricatta which is their scientific name, are small carnivorous animals that are apart of the mongoose family (comprised of small carnivores). They are social animals so they travel in packs of at least twelve.  This also makes finding food a lot easier. For their diets, they mainly consume small bugs, animals, birds and even various poisonous scorpions. They reside mostly in dry lands and savannas and such. The meerkat taxonomy is as follows: 

JH. Taxonomy Table. 2019.

JH, Meerkat mosaic, 2019

JH, meerkats, 2019

Meerkats are not the only ones who have these specifications under their taxonomy. There are other organisms that share similar traits with meerkats. I chose to compare my meerkat to some of my classmate's animal's the African Penguin and Giraffe. Meerkats are animals that dwell in savannas and dry areas. Believe it or not the giraffes are the same. that dwell, primarily, in savannas and dry land because the plants there are easier to take in rather than the bitter and tough qualities of say a forest. They also , in fact, have more room to move around because savannas are basically a long, vast amount of space of dry nothing, which would make it easier for a giraffe to spot a predator and flee the scene with haste.

JH, Venn Comparison, 2019

In this class we also talked about set theory. Set theory is just another way of categorizing certain groups. So if a meerkat is a group then its taxonomy could fall under it. Here are some of the sets that I came up with.

Meerkat epsilon mammals

- meerkats are an element or part of the set of mammals.

Universal set={meerkat, African penguin, giraffe}

-the current set of animals being described is a meerkat, giraffe, and an African penguin.

Compliment of the universal={null}

-every animal not being talked about in this project is null. There is not other animal being displayed

Meerkats U giraffe={mammals, live in savannas, live in groups}

-meerkats and giraffes traits are that they are mammals, they live in savannas, and they move in groups

Meerkats intersection penguin={carnivora}

-the only taxa that describe both of these animals is carnivora.

This project was very tedious Just because there were a lot of steps that went into creating this project. We went to the zoo to get a picture of our animal, then we created a mosaic of the animal in the picture in reference to the original photo. Then we animated that mosaic. Next we created a table that consisted of the taxonomy for the animal that we chose. And that is not all we did, but for the sake of your and my time I kept it short. But as you can tell, there was a lot to do. Even though it was very tedious, it was also kind of fun. Learning about the taxa of multiple animals and making a collage out if it was nice. I enjoyed it and I hope you do too.