A Biological Primer on the Biology of, Um, Animal Biology

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I took AP Biology in high school.  Double period AP Biology.  That, coupled with the fact that I am the first post of the week here at The Bathtub and my column revolves around providing information, led me to realize that I am the ideal person to brief you on a topic that will come up again and again during Zoo Week here on the blog: animals.

Biology class was in 2000-2001, though, so I knew I needed a little mental refresher.  After some preliminary reasearch--which amounted to me scanning Wikipedia pages and seeing words like "eukaryotic," "heterotrophic," and "desmosomes--" my memory snapped into action.  It was like AP Bio had only ended moments ago!  Suddenly, I remembered everything--how I'd gotten mono and missed a month and a half of class; how AP Bio was fifth period and I was always late coming back from lunch, and then leaving early for basketball games and track meets; how I'd only gotten a 2 on the AP exam . . . Oops.

Thus came the realization that I am indeed the last person who should be educating you about the complex world of animals.  But it was too late to turn back.  I'd already invested valuable minutes into all that Googling and reminiscing about high school.  All I could do was press forward.  The result is what follows: A Biological Primer on the Biology of, Um, Animal Biology.

What Makes An Animal an Animal
There are a few things that make an animal an animal.  The cellular makeup of animals is different from, for example, that of plants and bacteria. Animals are multicellular, which basically means they get free nights and weekends.  They are also eukaryotic, which means their cell phones get better reception than protists'.  Finally (and not as in "this is the final difference," but as in "this is about as far as I feel like going here"), animals are heterotropic.  This basically means they can swallow pennies and bits of string and such, but unfortunately do not obtain any real nourishment from them.

What Animals Look Like
The short answer here is that you'll know 'em when you see 'em.  In fact, this was the principle that scientists operated on for years until a more formal classification system was developed.  That classification system ruined all the fun.  Now it's much harder to describe what exactly an animal is made up of.  For example, most of them have muscles, but some don't (sea sponges, Nicole Richie).  Most of them also have an internal digestive chamber, but then again, some don't (certain worms, Nicole Richie again). 

I believe Justin Douglas will be shedding some more light on the topic of animal classification later today, so that's as much detail as I'll go into in this category.

Reproduction and Growth and Development
Through some very complex processes, animals are capable of producing offspring, which then grow and develop through a series of other very complex processes.  These processes govern everything from why milk does a body good to why dogs hump pillows, and you should trust me when I say that none of these processes are very glamorous at the biological level. 

The human reproductive cycle is perhaps the most interesting of all the animals.  It goes a little like this:

1. Human gives birth to baby
2. Baby grows into fifth grader
3. Fifth grader takes county-mandated class on sexual development and is too embarrassed to ask any questions in front of his peers
4. Fifth grader gets older--some things sort of start to make sense; others don't
5. Human (or his female significant other) gets pregnant
6. Repeat steps 1-5

So as you can see, if that is as interesting it gets for humans,  I wouldn't be doing you any favors by explaining the process of lobsters or bumblebees. 

Conclusion

I've done the best I can to give you some helpful background information for Zoo week at The Bathtub.  That being said, I just re-read it a little and it's not really very helpful at all.  However, if there's one thing I remember from biology class, it's that all I really need to be able to do to be smarter than most other species is know how to throw rocks and remember things that happened more than a day ago.  Looks like I'm set, suckas, cause I was throwin' rocks all day yesterday!

Lauren McMahon (e-mail) writes "Too Much Information" on Monday mornings.  Find out more here.

Comments

[emily bender]

do you remember how strange looking our teacher was? i'm blanking on her name, but that probably also contributes to the fact that i, too, did rather poorly on the AP exam.

[Lauren]

Hahaha yes it was Crabtree, and she was the strangest-looking person EVER as I recall

[Tori]

Yes; the AP Bio teacher did look weird! She had some hella strange skin disorder that rendered her kinda green. (But I didn't take AP Bio. My biology education stopped with the magic of Hodos' class . . . )

Lauren, thanks for including cell porn. I love that shit.

[Phylan]

I'm totally going to get fired for looking at mitosis money shots at work.

[Jerome]

"Animals are multicellular, which basically means they get free nights and weekends." Haha, good line.

[KELLYq]

are biscuits animals? and, more importantly, will you ever include money shots of biscuit porn?

[Inactive account]

What about lesbian koala porn? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10425714

[KELLYq]

Gregory: LAME. there were NO PICTURES.

[the mayor]

oh KELLYq -- you want to see pictures of lesbian koala porn? Is there no end to your sexual deviance??