Hello again blogosphere!!
First of all I will have to apologize for my very very late posting! I actually had a bunch of blog posts planned up, but over the Christmas break I went back home to Malaysia, and everybody wanted to drag me around places, to do everything at the same time!! Going back home over the holidays is always a wonderful wonderful thing, but I always feel like sometimes I need my break from the break I am taking! Being a masters student of course, this actually meant that it was a working holiday. I'm not going to lie, being a masters student is a lot of work, work work. But all in all, it really does help a lot, and the feedback from the course is wonderful and helpful, especially to help in future careers.
Speaking of work, today we had a poster presentation! We each had to do a poster about a topic in ornithology (the study of birds) - mainly that of chickens (which by the way I have heard called chickenology by a man who basically described himself as a chickenologist)) on different topics surrounding the poultry industry.
The topic in which I had done was about photoperiodicity in poultry reproduction. Photoperiodicity and circadian rhythms are a few of the topics that I am very interested in as a scientist. Photoperiodicity is essentially the reaction of plants and animals to the different lengths of day and night.
Looking through many many scientific papers (also something that scientists just tend to do a lot), I discovered that light effects poultry, mainly in two ways. One: poultry species (chicken, quail, duck, turkey) cannot become sexually mature unless they have a certain amount of daylight. Two: The birds wont lay eggs unless they have a certain amount of daylight. So essentially, day is very important if you want your birds to lay.
Interesting is it not?
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