Maggots and "acceptable animals"

At the MEES conference, I took some Eristalis larvae for people to observe. I've done this plenty of time with students and -- at least with Biology students -- it generally works really well as an observation exercise. I've used lots of stuff that can work really well -- almost anything can. I've used green onions and walnuts before. But Eristalis larvae are about the best, because they're so unusual.

After the presentation Kathy Davis asked if she could have the larvae to use with her pre-service teachers. I said, "Sure!". Today, she send me email to explain how they worked out. She thanked me for my presentation and then said:

my students in my Thurs class were not all that excited about the maggots...they seemed to have some biases floating around about what animals are acceptable and which are not...can you imagine that? WE had a bit of a conversation about garbage, etc. which led to boa costrictors and other animals usually marginalized from the in-crowd of critters. Anyway, they did look at them as long as the lids were on the little containers.

Here's my reply:

Thanks for your kind words about my presentation -- I had a good time.

Regarding what animals are acceptable, I had a similar experience with biology students. Each year, I identify a theme for the projects that were going to study -- I've tried leaving it open and constraining it and have found that constraints usually generate a better project in the end. So I usually pick some organism or theme for the class to study. Usually I've picked a plant -- or some plant themed project (like trees, garlic mustard or lichens) -- because plants are safe. You can find them reliably year round and you don't need to fill out 50 pages of paperwork to study them. But students say they hate plants -- they want to study animals. So last year, I decided we could study an animal you can find reliably in the Morrill Science Center: the cockroach! I thought it was a brilliant idea. Students could study an animal and I wouldn't have to fill out a mountain of paperwork. Unfortunately, even biology students don't seem to believe cockroaches are animals. Or they want to study animals, but will make a special exception for cockroaches. So last semester, I took some Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches to my first class for students to handle, but then suggested maybe we could study tardigrades instead. Only a few students complained about studying tardigrades after that.

Another animal I've thought we might be able to find in Morrill: Psocoptera (aka "book lice"). I'm not sure students would like them any better. I've thought it would be interesting to examine faculty member's books for psocopterans to see which faculty members have the most and the most diverse populations of psocopterans: you could think up all kinds of factors that might contribute to diversity in the population.

Anyway, sorry your ingrate students didn't much like the maggots. :-)