First Year Seminar 191CNS31 - FYS-Invertebrate Sensory World

Bzzzz ? splat! These were almost certainly the last few seconds experienced by multiple mosquitoes hovering hopefully around you during the summer months. But how do they choose what organism to take a blood meal from? How did they find you when they?re just a small insect in a big, chaotic world? And how do they avoid being ?splatted?? This semester, we?ll explore the sensory capabilities of various invertebrate species including mosquitoes, wasps, spiders, and octopuses. We?ll try to understand how these animals do what they do, some with sensory abilities that are worse than ours, and others with abilities many times better. How do they use these abilities to survive, and how did their senses evolve in the first place? In this course we?ll dive into these questions, while also taking a critical look at how scientists have used the scientific method for hundreds of years to address what?s going on in the minds of the tiny organisms all around us.

First year (Fr or Soph)