Hippos aren’t fat, and they can’t swim. A mouse can survive a fall from any height. There are salamanders one foot long that don’t have lungs or gills. There are snakes that can see in complete darkness, and dolphins that can sense your heartbeat. And the animal with the largest brain relative to its body size is a fish—a fish with an amazing superpower. In this workshop, we’ll talk about the laws of nature that explain how creatures live and breathe and move around, and the senses they use to understand their world.

The two-day workshop includes the following topics. Each topic heading links to a printout of slides for the session.

• Different Visions
  • Our view of the world is defined by the range of our vision. There are properties of light that we can’t sense, and wavelengths of light we can’t see, that other creatures can. We’ll explore the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum and discuss creatures that use light we can’t see to inform their view of the world.
• Sensing Sound
  • Your ability to produce and make sense of sounds are truly remarkable. The difference between a “t” sound and a “d” sound is a few hundredths of a second difference in the timing of one part of the sound, but you can easily distinguish the two. We sense sound with our ears, which are on the sides of our heads. But other animals sense sound quite differently: animals that live in water don’t need external ears, owls have ears on the front of their faces, and spiders sense sounds with their legs. We’ll explore the remarkable ways that animals—including humans—sense sounds and use them to analyze the world around them.
• Living In Water
  • Hippos can’t swim, and manatees aren’t fat. For creatures that live and move in water, the details of existence are quite different than for those of us who spend our days on land, and there are some real surprises in how these creatures get around. The buoyant force balances the force of gravity, and motion up and down—diving and then surfacing—requires special adaptations. And some creatures are able to live at the boundary between air and water, an even more remarkable feat. We’ll discuss all this, and more.
• Form and Function
  • When you lift a 10 pound weight, your muscles might be exerting 90 pounds (or more!) of force. This has to do with how our muscles attach to our bones. But why would things be connected this way? Humans—among animals that can run—are pretty much the slowest animals on the block. Why would we be so slow compared to other animals? And there are animals that can sense electric fields, but only animals that live in water. Why don’t air-dwelling creatures have this sense? In this session, we’ll discuss all these topics, and more.