Horseshoe Crab - What I Learned Teaching with the Program Sea-to-See at FSU

This blog is about my favorite animal--an animal that almost predates the dinosaurs in origin and looks like it could easily be something from a alien exoplanet.  Below are the notes of what I teach at FSU's Sea-to-See program about this very special creature.  The Sea-to-See program travels to local elementary schools and provides an interactive learning experience for kids aimed at raising awareness of both the scientific method, local habitats in our area and the organisms that dwell therein.  The horseshoe crab very easily turned into my favorite to present--for a number of reasons--many of which you'll find out about below.  A fair amount of the material below was from my own personal curiosity being piqued and doing some personal research and the rest is from a few brilliant coworkers such as Beth Kostka and Heather Sneed. 

Try and imagine you're a kid with your chest pressed up against the side of a 100 gallon touch tank rapt in curiosity.  (The below is kind of a script.  I also could never cover all of the below at once.  I pick and choose as I see fit based on time/class ability.  I also use the masculine singular pronoun since I worked with mostly male crabs.)

This is me!

After inviting the children to gather around the touch tank, I explain that I want to borrow everyone's eyes for just a second and that I promise to give them back (to make sure they're paying attention).  I bend down to their level and then go on to say that there are two rules at the tank, "First rule: One person can talk at a time.  That way each of us can hear what another has to say.  That makes sense, right?  Second:  One animal at a time, that way we cover more.  Put up your thumbs if you think those rules are awesome!!"  The children are eager to play with the animals, so they readily comply.   Then I say that I need their help to pull the tarp cover off of the tank on the count of three.  Stretching out the count a little builds anticipation.  Once they're able to see in the tank I usually let out a seed "Wow!!!" almost like a laugh track is used to get other people to laugh.  haha.  I then explain that I want to talk about the horseshoe crab--the biggest, baddest, scariest crab in the whole tank--the star of the show!!!

Limulus polyphemus

"Does anyone know his name?"  A lot of kids will say 'stingray'.  I lovingly say that makes sense because he looks like one, but this is actually a horseshoe crab and that if you use your imagination a little bit his shell is kind of shaped like a horseshoe crab.  "He's my favorite because he's a 'living fossil'.  That means that he looks just like his great, great, great, great, great...grand parents from 200 million years ago!  That's almost before the dinosaurs first walked the Earth!!!"  I then say that I want to talk about his top side, then his underside and then that we'll have a time for touching and holding.

The Stinger 

"First, I want to talk about this tail.  What do you think it's for?  Many people when they look at this tail think that it's for stinging and some people even say that if you touch it that your hand is going to swell up and fall off!    Does anyone want to reach out and have their hand swell up and fall off."   (Some will say, "That's ridiculous!" and reach out to touch the tip of the tail.  Then the other kids will follow suit.  Some classes will become really worried and quite literally jump back from the tank.  During those times I'll have to touch the tip and explain that I was just being silly and that the rumors people tell aren't true.)

Once they know it isn't a stinger I can then ask, "What's it for then?  If it isn't stinging, why does the horseshoe crab have it?  What's its purpose?"  Kids may guess for protection, steering, to look scary, maybe to look like a stingray (mimicry), etc.  Next I ask if anyone wants to know a secret.  Kids seem to love secrets for some reason.  haha.  After that I say that I'm going to flip him over and that I want them to figure out what the secret use of that tail is.    Crab will most likely have trouble flipping over in tank due to plexiglass bottom and shallow water.  I say that he needs some cheering on.  I then start a chant of, "Horseshoe crab, horseshoe crab, horseshoe crab..."  I give him a boost to help him a long a little by lifting the tail and explain that if he wasn't in this tank he'd already be right side up.   "So, what's he use that tail for?  What would  happen if that tail broke off and he got flipped over?"  The answer, of course, is that it's essential to flip over from his back. 

The Creeper Watching Eyes


  "Reach out and touch the top of the crab.  How does it feel?  Give it a light tap to feel how strong it is.  Now, can anyone find his eyes?  How many eyes do you think he has?"  Kids will guess low numbers like 2, 3, 4, etc.  As they go up in numbers I'll say enthusiastically, "Getting warmer!!!  Getting warmer!!!  Warmer!!!"  This back and forth antiphonal response will elevate in speed and volume until I finally break in and say, "Would you believe if I said that he has two...thousand eyes!!!"  Kids often let out a gasp of disbelief.  "Take a close look!  Each one of those eyes has almost one thousand eyes packed into it."  I ask the kids if they've ever walked by a painting and felt like the painting was watching them no matter where they were standing.  Guess what?  He has eyes like that!!!"    An appearance of a black ocular dot will appear to follow the observer.  "Why? Why do we only have two eyes that see really, really well and he has 2,000 eyes that don't see as well?"  Kids will speculate that maybe it is to see in multiple directions simultaneously.  I say that maybe we can test that!

"We should first test on ourselves.  Let's test our field of vision, that's the range that we can see in."  Next I ask the kids to pick out a point across the room to look at.  I tell them to fix and lock their heads and eyes on that object.  (Kids will want to cheat and move their eyes.)  I then ask them to take their hands and put them in front of of their body like they're going to give someone a big hug.  Then to take their hands and spread them eagle until they can't see their hands any more.  That is their field of vision.  Mine is about 170 degrees.  Review how many degrees a half circle is.  Then I excitedly say that we can test the field of vision of the horseshoe crab.  I then pick a volunteer across from me.  They will then need to pick one of the large eyes on top to experiment with.  I then say that if you can see the crab's eye that he can see you.  Does that make sense?  I then say that I'm going to rotate the top of the crab and that they should let me know when they start to see the eye and when they stop seeing the eye.  Having completed that I gesture with my hand and review for everyone what the volunteer stated as when they started and when they stopped seeing the eye.  Ask for an estimation of how many degrees (reviewing that a full circle is 360, half circle is 180, etc.)  Then figure out the total of both eyes combined, explaining that there will be overlap in fields of vision between the two eyes.  The crab can see in a full circle!!!  I then use examples from the kids attire:  "He can see your cool baseball cap.  He can see your purple sweater over there!  He can see your red quicksilver shirt right here!  He can see all of us at once!!  Imagine what that would feel like to see all around you at once!!!"

A Horseshoe Crab's Calendar and Watch


Inevitably, one of kids will point out the two dots on his carapace that looks like a nose.  I then ask, "Well, if that was his nose, would it be a hole or a dot?"  Kids may flounder in answering, but eventually one will realize that it would need to be holes to be a nose since air or water must circulate through it.  I then ask for them to look very closely to see which it is.  I then explain that it's another set of eyes that specialize in UV light, an invisible light to humans, and that they use that to tell what phase of the moon it is (or time of day) to synchronize their reproduction (said euphemistically, usually).

The Underbelly of the Great Beast


"Who's feeling brave today?!?!  I mean really, really, really, super, duper brave!!!    I'm going to ask you to do something really, really scary.  Like so scary that I don't think ____ grade could do it." Pick one grade below whatever the kids are.  "Here's what I'm going to ask you to do.  I'm going to flip this crab over and he has one dozen scary claws.  How many is a dozen?    If you're feeling brave, and not everyone has to do this, I want you to stick your hand in that mess of claws!!!"    The group dynamics of this are fascinating.  If the ice isn't broken by one of the kids (preferably a girl so the boys have to defend their masculinity) then I may have to demonstrate and explain that his pinchers aren't for defense like a blue crabs/stone crabs.  They're just for picking stuff up and for walking with.  Other times one of the 'cool' kids will do it and subsequently every single kid will want to.

The Mustache of the Great Beast

"Here's what I want you to do.  I'm going to flip him over again and I want you to touch his back again and while you're touching it I want you to think about this--he can't feel that.  He may not be able to feel that, but he does have a way of feeling.  What could it be?  Can anyone help me solve this mystery?  Alright, everyone stick out your arm.  Now, take your hand and very lightly touch your arm.  I know that you've done that before, but this time I want you to think about it like a scientist would.  What method does your body use to feel?  We see by our eyes letting in light and our brain interprets that light as sight, vision.  We feel by pressure.  When we touch our arm we feel an ever so slight, teeny-weeny, microscopic dent or indentation on our arm.  Does that make sense?  We feel by our soft skin being pushed on, but the crab doesn't have soft skin.  How does it feel then?  Stick your arm out again.   This time don't touch your arm, but just barely tickle the hairs on your arm.  That's how the horseshoe crab feels!  Let's flip him over again and you point out every where that he has a bunch of hairs.  Those are places that he really wants to feel!"  (Kids point out mouth area and hind quarters.)  "So, why do you think that he wants to feel so well right around here?"  (Waves finger around mouth. Kids make guesses.)  "Why does a cat or a dog have whiskers?  Well, where's his mouth?  How might a scientist make sure that's his mouth?"  It surprises me that this can be a tough question.  One right answer is to put some food there and see if it gets eaten.

Death by Funky Chicken


"The other weird thing about the horseshoe crabs mouth is that his teeth are attached to his legs!!  Who wants to be a horseshoe crab with me for a minute?"  Kids raise hands.  "We're going to do something silly.   So, how do you eat if your teeth are attached to your legs?  You do the funky chicken!!"  Kids have fun acting this out.

Half Billion Year Old Habits Die Hard


"The ancestors of the horseshoe crabs, the eurypterids, started laying eggs on the beach almost 500 million years ago.  Why?"  Wait for people to think about it.  If I'm presenting to adults I'll see if they know what was happening at the time period and whether or not the dinosaurs had arrived on the scene.  "Because there was literally nothing on the land at that time--no plants, no animals and certainly no predators.  The land was the perfect safe haven for their offspring and now they've continued that tradition for half of a billion years.  Now, more recently, it's a very important part of the diet of many migratory birds (like the endangered Red Knot that flies from Canada down to the tip of S. America yearly--9,300 miles)."

Blue Blood


"Horseshoe crabs have blue blood.  Does anyone know why our blood is red?  Iron!  Well, they have blue blood because they use copper instead of iron to carry oxygen around in their blood!"

Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate


"Who has gotten an immunization or flue shot recently?  Did you know that those shots get tested with a compound from horseshoe crabs?!  It's true!  Because the environment the horseshoe crabs live in isn't exactly the cleanest--it can have billions of bacteria per gram of mud--they have very special adaptations to deal with the bacteria.  One of which is that their blood has a compound, Limulus amoebocyte lysate, that coagulates in the presence of gram-negative bacteria (the kind we need to worry about the most for infections).  The government requires that medical companies test their shots with this compound and if they put into the sample and it coagulates they know the batch is contaminated and they know to throw it out.  Your life could have been saved by a horseshoe crab and you didn't eve know it!!"

Male 'boxing glove' claw used to hold on to female's carapace.

Boys vs. Girls


(Hold up crab.)  "Is this a boy horseshoe crab or a girl?"  (Kids will never not answer.  Funny to think about how ingrained gender is into our psyches, even at a young age.  Flip crab over after taking vote.)  "Here's how we tell: the males crabs have a 'boxing glove' pincher that they use to hold onto the backs of of the females (right next to the base of the tail).  Females have all the same kind of claws."

Snow Shoes

"What do you think these weird flower feet are for?"  Pause for guesses.  Allow the kids to speculate.  "Pushing on soft mud.  There is also a tiny claw on that leg that is specific for cleaning the gills.  His underside is kind of a Swiss army knife of tools!"

All Booked Up


Point out book gills.   "Why do you think they're called book gills?"  Wait for guesses.  "Because the individual flaps look like the pages of a book!"

Fed Up


(This is acted out dramatically.)  "Here's how the horseshoe crab eats.  He takes his big head and then rams it into the mud.  Then he takes all those pinchers and starts ramming them into the mud to find anything he can get--worms, clams, crustaceans, etc. and then pulverizes them with his leg-teeth."

O-So Hungry


"What's the longest you've gone without eating?"  Kids may say a day or most of a day.  "Guess how long a horseshoe crab can go without  eating?  Some sources say up to a year!"

Flabellum


"This tiny, insignificant little flap has a very important use.  It has over 1 million chemical sensors and can be used to detect carbon dioxide so as to let the crab know when he ought to move out of stagnant water."  (Flabellum means tiny fan in Latin and in Roman Catholicism it is the name of the tiny fan used to shew flies away from the Sacraments.)

Spines - Why Science Is Still Cool


"What do you think these move-able spines are for?"  Pause for kids to process out loud.  "Maybe you're right!  I have been told that scientists aren't sure the exact function of them.  I love that fact.  Do you know why?  I love it that there is still so much to learn!  I love that maybe you can grow up, become a scientist and help to solve some of these mysteries!!"

  Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.


Works sighted [sic]:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab
http://www.beach-net.com/horseshoe/Bayhorsecrab.html
http://horseshoecrab.org/
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/education/horseshoecrab/
http://www.arkive.org/horseshoe-crab/limulus-polyphemus/
http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/factsheets/horseshoe_crab.html
http://horseshoe-crabs.com/
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_delaware.html

How to Love the Truth

• Seek It 
• Be curious 
• Indulge your curiosity 
• Be around curious people 
• Google your questions 
• Read 
• Go the library 
• Ask experts/friends 
• Trust 
• Senses - They are good enough to drive with. 
• Mind - It is good enough to get man to the moon. 
• Experts - They're scared enough of losing their job that they relatively have their shtuff together. 
• Doubt 
• Authority - Beware of hegemony, self promotion and parasitic self replicating memes. 
• Tradition - Question the status quo.  Those that don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
• Self - There are many, many, many things that you are wrong about. Don't add to that list by being wrong about being wrong 
• Defend It 
• Argue with people--civilly. Truth is discovered communally. A community of people exchanging ideas like a super network of neurons firing back and forth to each other. The world community is one big brain (and the internet is the synapses:)). We're smarter together. 
• Proclaim It 
• Start conversations: Bring up important subjects. Go beyond small talk. Talk big. 
• Preserve truth in writing: Make it so you and others can come back to that thought after it's faded or been forgotten.  Why aren't you blogging?  Srsly.

Consciousness Raising Events

Good science education is providing experiences or information that raises people’s consciousness of the universe around them. It expands minds. Opens doors of understanding. Removes the scales from our eyes.

That got me thinking.

What are events in my life that didn't change the world around me, but did change the world within me--my perception of reality?

At this point, I should be clear in what I mean by ‘consciousness raising’. I don’t mean a synonym for enlightenment. I don’t mean anything like Gnosticism or Buddhism.

I think the distinction between learning and realizing is a helpful one. ‘Learning’, as I’m defining it, is the accumulation of dispassionate information--largely irrelevant factoids. ‘Realizing’, however, isn’t the addition of a new bit of information so much as it is that fact being real, personal, vivid, 3-D, palpable, first person, high def--experienced rather than just known about.

In no particular order here’s a list of thing that raised my consciousness (often much later looking back on them). I really, really, really want to hear yours. Please comment. Please message. I am fascinated by this topic (for the time being, hehe).

Self

• My appendix rupturing: It was there I accepted I shared a common ancestor with the great apes. This has changed much of how I see myself, psychology, my body, religion and who I am. 
• Puberty: Feels weird to talk about it, but going through puberty was eye opening. I realized then what so many jokes, songs, movies, novels and TV shows were talking about. My body and my understanding of relationships forever changed.. 
• Running marathons: This has shown me a number of things. It’s shown me how much eating right, resting, and exercise really does affect one’s body, health, mind and mood. I had known that, but with running I could feel it. What I did directly affected what I’d do on the track. Also, exercises has given me so, so much more energy and elevated my baseline mood. Didn’t know there was such a connection with what you do and how you’ll feel. 
• Morphine Hallucinations: So, after coming out of appendix surgery I was on some pretty trippy stuff (I was really bad off. I have a six inch scar and was in the hospital for 8 days). It’s kind of a stretch to say that hallucinating raised my consciousness, but it does help me understand why people do drugs. I saw: a room filled with cotton candy, a bowling ball, cat/dog headed people, and I got trapped in a mushroom castle. Crazy. 
• Had a seizure: Just one. I was watching Batman the cartoon as a kid and then suddenly my muscles seized up and I tried to call out, but my parents say that I was just moaning and sticking out my tongue. Haha. That experience helps me relate to people with brain conditions. So weird it happened just once. 
• Teaching: I can think of a couple of times that I was so keyed up from teaching afterwards that I had trouble sleeping. Those events helped solidify what I want to do with my life. 
• Kids: There was a time when my employer asked me to do as a volunteer what I used to be paid to do. Accepting the offer even though I felt insulted made me realize how much I really do love working with kids. 

Culture

• Worship: I was radically affected by an experience of feeling what I perceived to be the presence of God. I truly felt at the time that I had my consciousness raised to a spiritual realm. 
• China: Like no other place I’ve been to, China rocked my world. Everything is different there--toilets, door nobs, locks, side walks, curbs, tonal language (their entire language is one syllable words pronounced in strange ways--up, down, diphthong, flat inflections), pictorial written language (where you have to know ten thousand characters just to be able to read the news paper), they form questions by adding a tag word of ‘ma’ instead of bringing the tone up at the end like we do, the communist government, electronics, drastically different religion, vegetables, smells (When we walk into a store we’re used to smelling synthetic lavender or synthetic vanilla etc. but they have totally different flowers and fruits there so nothing seems normal. You walk into a store and it smells like a synthetic lychee fruit or some asian flower your nose has never experienced. Very weird.) and people just act, think, are motivated differently. The kicker is China is almost a quarter of the world’s population. Also, it was a big deal to me to experience that those 1.4 billion people don’t share my religion. I had known that, but seeing it was different. 
• Language: Language is shaped by reality, but language also shapes our reality. You’ve heard of these examples--some cultures only have four numbers (one, two, three and many), some cultures only have two words for colors (hot colors and cold colors), and some cultures have something like 40 different words for the different types of snow (based on texture, appearance, temperature, etc.). Those are simple examples, but it can get much more complicated when languages have limited tenses, gendered nouns, verbs that describe whether the event happened once, repeatedly or a process over time. There are tribal languages that don’t have different tenses. That has to affect how they think of reality. Taking a Spanish and Greek opened my eyes to their world and by seeing theirs I saw my own. Words create worlds. 

Life

• Love: Loving another changes you. You want to be a better person. 
• Mexico: I went to Reynosa, Mexico in high school to build homes. It was the whole, “I went there to change their lives, but they ended up changing mine,” experience. I had never seen that level of abject poverty before. The family that we built a house for lived in what couldn’t even be described as a shack. It was a accumulation of boards, scrap metal, sacks and tarps. It was dirt floor. They had no electricity. If they wanted water they had to walk 2 miles to a nasty river--the Rio Bravo. They used an out house. They couldn’t even afford the nominal fee the government charged to get a birth certificate so that their child could go to school (he was around ten and had never gone to school). Seeing that affected me. Made me realize that every American is rich. I was rich. Ever since then I have a personal conviction to never complain about things like gas prices or to take for granted the food, water, and electricity that I enjoy every waking moment of my day. 
• Volunteering at Give Kids the World and going to a special needs foster home: I was probably around ten or twelve when a home school group my family was a part of went on a field trip to a special needs foster home. That was the first time I was around children my age with severe mental handicaps and severe disabilities. We were getting a tour of the facility and I remember the care taker taking us to one room where a young man spent the entire day moaning and screaming. Another room where a girl was nearly brain dead and who had no eyes. If there was any doubt as to whether she had eyes or not the care taker cleared that up by gently cradling her head and lifting one of her eye lids with her thumb. You could see the capillary filled back of her eye socket. That image was burned in my mind as a kid. It definitely affected me and until this day I remember it vividly. Subsequent volunteering at places like Give Kids the World, which give a magical vacation experience to families with children with terminal illnesses, cemented into my consciousness both the beauty of the people that give their lives in the service of loved ones and the level of suffering so many in the world experience. I’ve got it good. Really good. 
• Tallahassee: This isn’t as big as many of the others, but still worth mentioning I think. It’s been great to move to Tallahassee, figure some things out about myself and see that I can support myself and make a great life on my own. That’s felt great. 

Nature of the Universe

• Microscope: Seeing an amoeba for the first time collected from the scum pond water near my house was a transcendent moment for me as a kid. There’s a whole invisible world that is all around us. All the time. Right now. Look around. They’re there!! hehe 
• Plane: I hope you can remember looking out the window of a plane for the first time. You realize how very, very, very, very, very small you are. And how the world is big than you can imagine. Yet also very small, too... 
• Boat: It’s powerful to go so far on a boat you can’t see the shore any more and then realize that most of the world--70-75%ish--is exactly like that. Dirt and land are the minority exception. 
• Snorkeling: When I can’t sleep and my mind is whizzing with thoughts I’ll often transport myself to my happy place--snorkeling off of Fort Lauderdale. There’s a whole new world down there and seeing it first hand has affected how I understand the Earth. 
• Telescope: I was greatly affected by seeing the moons and bands of Jupiter and Saturn’s rings. Eye opening. Also, solar flares in a solar telescope. There’s just something about seeing it live and without a whole bunch of computers and processors; just seeing it with lenses and mirrors. 
• Limestone quarry: I’ve been lucky enough to go to two limestone quarries. One in Aurora, NC and one near Arcadia, FL. It’s amazing to think about what is below our feet--billions of years of history, countless remains that whisper secrets of the past. It’s one thing to read that in a book; another thing to see the layers before your very eyes. 
• Dissecting: Ya, it’s smelly and gross, but I unconsciously x-ray under my skin when I look at my body or have an ache or ailment. I owe that largely to dissecting as a kid with my mother’s biology class. 
• Microbiology lab: I recently swabbed my own skin and then inoculated a petri dish with the critters that were growing on me. Wow. Just to see the different colors and growth patterns of the stuff on you is freaky. Really freaky. But also really neat. We’re never alone!

Intelligent Design and Falsifiability

Here's the difference between science and Intelligent Design: one is falsifiable and one isn't.

"I believe gravity causes things to become attracted to each other."
"No, it doesn't."
"Fine, let's put it to the test!"
[Apple is let go and suspends in mid-air]

That's preposterous, but at least it's falsifiable.

Here's how the other conversation would go:

"I believe Poseidon created the seas and all that is in them."
"No, he didn't!"
"O, ya?! Prove that he didn't!!"

Do you see the difference?

That's yet another reason why many scientists cry fowl when religion tries to take a foot hold in science. It doesn't follow the same rules as everything else. Science by its very nature has to be falsifiable. Intelligent Design may be a perfectly reasonable personal explanation of how the universe came to be and life and complexity within it, but religion in sheep's clothes can be a dangerous thing scientifically.

Science is...Childlike Questions

Heather, my wonderful sister and exemplar scientific thinker, has told me a story of discussing with her her grad school advisor about what good science is. He said that good science is good questions.


Good questions are...

• Focused - neither too broad nor too narrow.

Goldilocks

• Valuable- after having answered the question will our lives be any more enriched? If not, scrap it.

• Answerable - will you actually be able to answer the question?

• Insightful - I view getting a bachelors in biology as studying for years to ask one really good graduate school thesis question. All that study for one question. It takes alot of knowledge to ask good questions.

• Narrow in asking, broad in implication - Heather also spoke of her sage of an advisor stating that a good question is one that may be small, but answers a larger question. For example, a researcher doesn't study planaria reproduction because they want to only know more about planaria. They want to use that knowledge to know something about the whole tree of life, like how species evolve. One doesn't study aphids, one studies a branch in the ecological web as a whole. One doesn't study whale digestion, but how animals convert chemical energy into biological energy. Et cetera.

By implication, science is being curious. It's wanting to know how the world around you works, why it works and what we can do with that knowledge.  


It's wide eyed wonder about the truly ineffably amazing state of the universe around us.  It's mystery.  It's intrigue. It's the excitement of discovery. It's adventure.

Science is being unsettled. Unsettled by not knowing 'why', 'how'. It's not being okay with standard myths, theories, explanations.

Science is being hungry for answers. It's insatiability.

Science is argument. It's caring enough about reality to debate, to confront, to challenge.

Science is holding reality in reverence above all else - popular opinion, dogma, authority, tradition.

That's difficult business, though. Easier said than done. Life is distracting.  

How can we keep ourselves curious? Vested in the nature of reality?  


By staying childlike.

How do children think?

• With New Eyes - Everyone remembers their first kiss. There is something impactful about doing something for the first time. Children experience that all the time. You've heard it many times (so much so that its lost its impact, haha, how ironic) that familiarity breeds contempt. The opposite can be just as true, new eyes breed wonder. How can you get new eyes again? One way is to study widely. I've learned the most about English by studying other languages. I've only realized my Americanness by traveling to China. Read fringe thinkers. Learn about other fields of inquiry. You may be surprised at the insights you'll gain.

• Tabla Rasa - kids don't come with baggage. They have no expectations, no preconceptions. They aren't going to look for something a certain way, they just look.

• Relating It Back to Yourself - I've read Richard Dawkins talk about how personally kids can sometimes answer science questions like, why are flowers pretty? "So I can enjoy them!" the child might respond. While that in and of itself isn't the most model scientific thinking, it does show how that kids naturally have a way of making it about themselves. That can be a good thing. It can be a powerful motivator. If we could empower that same young thinker's mind with knowledge she/he might say something more along the lines of, "Flowers are beautiful to attract insects to carry their pollen to reproduce and I can't help but enjoy how incredibly ingenious, creative, beautiful that mutualistic symbiosis is!!!"  Studying biology for me has been an unbelievable journey of self discovery. Every fossil I read about, every biological mechanism and processy I learn about tells me something about myself by teaching me how I work, where I came from or about the processes that made me. It's personal. And, that is powerfully motivating to keep learning.

• They Get Dirty - Kids love gross. Why don't adults? Kids love mud. Why don't adults? Kids want to explore more than they want to be proper, to experience more than stay presentable, to satiate their curiosity over their desire to be accepted, adventure over safety. Bottom line, get dirty! You just might remember how good the cool embrace of mud can feel again!!

• Kids Take Time to Do Absolutely Nothing - You should, too. Remember having summer off? Think about when you have your best thoughts: while driving, while showering, while running, while meditating, while praying, while quiet, while relaxed, while letting your thoughts wander, meander, explore - unguided, unimposed, borderless, unfettered, natural, freeflow thoughts and inquiries. Figure out a way to maximize your time doing those activities. Nothing may be the most important thing you do all day.

• Kids Keep Asking and Asking and Asking... - I recently went to a presentation on butterflies. The local expert blew me away by how much he knew about species identification, diet, range, migration patterns, ecology, population threats, how to start a butterfly garden, etc. His knowledge was truly prodigious. I was taken aback by how easily he was stumped by the simplest of questions, though: why do butterfly wings have scales? I mean, the most obvious part of a butterfly is its wings and the most obvious part of their wings are the colored scales. So, why hadn't he thought of it? Well, I should be so hard on him. His interests were elsewhere. But, I did learn something that day from that question. Sometimes the best camouflage is obviousness. The most obvious place to look is often the last. One of the keys to exposing these cloaked blatants is to keep pushing the questions. Force yourself to question.  Don’t let it stop at the surface.  Keeping on pushing it and asking ‘why’ one more time and then one more time and then one more time...

This is my life's message. One of the major things that I want my life to represent right now is that it’s okay to question, to change your mind, to go a different direction, change your path. No, no, scratch that. It's essential to question. Questioning is a holy, sacred activity, integral to truly living, truly experiencing, truly seeing. We must not tell reality what she is, only listen by questioning.