Human and Head Lice

Recently in science class we learned about symbiosis. One symbiotic relationship is human and head lice. This is a form of parasitism and the host, the human, is harmed by this parasite. The head lice need to drink blood within 24 hours or they starve to death. If the head life starve to death the population of head lice will decrease. The flat bodied parasites attach their nits or eggs to their hosts scalp and soon the nits hatch into nymphs and later the nymphs turn into full grown adults. They will grow larger in size from the blood they drink. These wingless insects have claws on their legs that grip hold on their hosts scalp. The nits on the human scalp can be easily mistaken for hair spray droplets or even dandruff and that is why it may take a while for the human to find them. Once the human does find the lice they can be removen with shampoo or creme rinses. Overall, this is an important relationship in nature.

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http://www.co.lucas.oh.us/health/images/lice1b.jpg

Scientists Hop Into New Info About Kangaroos

Recently scientists have found that an Australian kangaroo named Matilda has a lot in common with humans than they thought. Matilda, a Tammar wallaby is small and has a lot of the same genomes as humans. This shows that the kangaroo shared a common ancestor with humans about 150 million years ago. The scientists also found fourteen other unknown genes that they believe also belong to humans. "Great chunks of genomes are virtually identical", said Jenny Graves, director of the government-backed research effort. The scientists started working on Matildas sequenced her genes last year and last week they finished putting all the pieces of the sequence together. The group of scientists plan on publishing their research on Matilda next year. Many other scientists are have also unraveled 24 other mammal's DNA. These studies are important so they can learn more about DNA and genomes and they can learn new things about the animals they are testing. Overall, this study on Matilda was very useful and we learned more about kangaroos due to it.

Article-
http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-as-sci-kangaroo-dna,0,1250231.story

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http://myanimalblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/gray-kangaroo.jpg