SNIPPETS II

Tavishi

My second term of university comes to a close, and yet again, I can't decide on what to write about. I'm starting to notice a pattern, because this is exactly what happened at the end of last term.

So far, this term, I've had 3 modules: Integrated Physiology I, Integrated Physiology II, and The Moving Animal. IPI and IPII are just anatomy and physiology, but a lot more in depth, and has the fun of comparative anatomy. Our labs for these have been less microscopy, and geared more towards dissections, or point-to-points. Point-to-point dissections are essentially when they set an army of RVC students free in a room full of plastinated and fresh specimens and make us point out where things are.

I've also been really involved in the RVC Pathology, Neurology, Zoology, and Anatomy clubs. Uh, I'm apparently now the Camden Representative of RVC Pathology Society, so that's hella chill. I made leukocyte cookies for the Pathology Bake Sale:

I'm also on the nerd committee (I organize board game playing and similar activities) and work in tech support. I'm breaking no stereotypes, I fear.

Anyways, snippets of term 2:

1. Despite the gym bro allegations, I actually hate learning about muscles. It doesn't click for me the way that learning about anatomy usually does. Last week, we did a muscle dissection, and I started crashing out because nothing was making sense or falling into place. After 30 minutes of harassing one of the final year students who are in charge of helping us, things started making sense. It was so so so cool! I didn't realize how shiny tendon sheaths actually are.

1. Also, horses. I have learned a lot more about horses than I initially thought I would. Horses are built for speed and speed only, are the exception to everything, and are easier to break than babies. If they eat too much grass, their hooves can fall off. Everything is wrong with these creatures, but they are really cute. They don't have a gallbladder, which isn't shocking. Also, they have a really large cecum and complex ascending colon. They basically have the GI tract of a rodent- they also have a monogastric stomach like us, but instead, it has one glandular and nonglandular bit separated by a division called the margo plicatus. In comparison, ruminants have, well, a ruminant stomach with four divisions.

   

2. I SAW A SEAL IN THE WILD!!! Little known fact about me: I love pinnipeds! I unironically took pinniped proximity when deciding on where I would attend university. London isn't the best place to see seals, but I put seeing a Thames seal on my fresher bucket list.

   Anyways, I'm familiar with the general pinniped hotspots, and also obsessively follow the ZSL Thames Marine Mammal Sightings website. I noticed a few sightings in one place, and did some digging and GeoGuessring (some dude posted an instagram video which helped me figure out exactly where the seal was hauling out.) Turns out, the seal was in Canary Wharf.

   

   

   His name is Simon, and it astounding how bad people are at respecting the boundaries of wildlife. Anyways, Simon is a ginger not because he is Irish, but rather, because he is rusty. This is common for seals (ha! pun. because he is a common seal. now laugh please. thank you). He's red because of iron-rich mud that has rusted and dyed his fur. It will come off when he does his annual molt, but he does, till then, have hair dye. #arcticsealnotarcticfox

   
   

3. I like horses, but I know I don't want to work with them as a career. I don't think I would particularly mind, but it's just not my career path. They're the animals I think I've learned the most about since coming here, (can you tell from the horse rant?), and I thought it would be cool to shadow an equine vet, because why not? Anyways, I'm shadowing an equine mobile veterinarian over Easter, (I will not say who because privacy..). She is also a horse dentist. Horses need dentists apparently because they are hypsodonts, meaning their teeth continue to erupt throughout life. As you can imagine, this does cause a lot more potential for issues than human teeth. Horses are also recommended to see dentists more often than people. I can say confidently that the horses at Healing Hearts Animal Rescue see the dentist more often than I see the dentist (I floss, brush, and have my teeth do a cartwheel seven times a day.)

   
   

4. I WENT TO BRIGHTON WITH MY FLATMATE AGAIN! It was really cool, and we saw very many birds and dogs. We essentially just walked along the coast until we had technically (ish?) reached the white cliffs of Dover, which are breathtaking. I saw strawberry anemones! Rockpooling is wonderful.

   

5. In an interesting turn of events, everyone here really likes watching Wild Kratts. This has unironically become something my friends watch together when hanging out. It's not even just my nerdy ass group who is doing this; it's like, a ridiculous amount of the RVC student body who watches Wild Kratts. As a much older and more learned person than I was at seven, watching Wild Kratts now is a mixed bag. Love the vibes of the show, but I forgot how many inaccuracies there are. I will say, I have realized that I might be pursuing a degree in Wild Kratts.

   Anyways, inaccuracies.

   Walruses do NOT use their tusks to dig around in the mud. On a similar note, narwhals do NOT use their tusks for fighting. There are a lot more, and I'm thinking of just watching the entire show and making a spreadsheet of everything they got wrong. To be fair, it is a show aimed at children, but I'm petty.

   

6. Everything somehow circles back to calcium and phosphate. It's kind of mind-boggling how intricate and elegant the PTH-calcitriol pathway is. Everything is so perfectly balanced. You close your eyes for one second and calcitriol shows up in a lecture. HOW? I just got out of a lecture about bones. I never really thought much about calcium and phosphate until this year, and now that I have started thinking about it, I can't stop. Low calcium and high phosphate in the blood triggers PTH release, resulting in an increase in reabsorption of calcium from the urine, and an increase in phosphate excretion.

   Why are calcium and phosphate linked? Because their major storage location is hydroxyapatite, or the mineralising crystal of bone. So far, I've implicated two organs implicated in calcium phosphate balance. BUT THERE ARE MORE!

   All of this is also manged by vitamin D3, the formation of which starts with freaking sunlight producing previtamin D3, which is converted to cholecalciferol, or vitamin D3. It's not useful yet, because it gets converted to 25 hydroxyvitamin D in the liver, and then, into 1,25 hydroxyvitamin D or 24,25 dihydroxyvitamin D. 1,25 hydroxyvitamin D is the long form of calcitriol, or the active form of vitamin D. 24,25 (OH)2 D is inactive. Calcitriol formation, however, is stimulated by parathyroid hormone. However, calcitriol, in turn, inhibits PTH, which ends up very elegantly regulating the whole calcium-phosphate pathway.

   

7. Other notes/thoughts/trivia: horse hearts are like the size of two of my fists.

   Nerves feel so strange.

   DINOSAURS? Very cool. Jurassic Park? Lied to you. Dinos don't drag their tails when they walk, that's bullshit.

   Crocodiles are the exception.

   Pigs can't swallow pills, pharyngeal diverticulum.

   It's nucleus tractus solitarius all the way down.

   I need to go to the zoo more often, it's free. Mort is smaller than you'd realize.

   Mouth rot is an increasingly prevalent pathology in common seals in Europe...

   Cymraeg lectures... not ideal.

   Ruminant stomach textures are kind of gorgeous?