Tag Archives: taxonomy

10 Great SciComm Twitter Games To Brighten Your Quarantine

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This month, in line with Global Citizen Science Month, we’ll have a special focus on all things citizen science. For those of you who are unaware of the concept, it’s an initiative by SciStarter and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, with support from the Citizen Science Association and National Geographic.

For those who haven’t heard the term before, citizen (or community) science is essentially an all-encompassing term for scientific research and learning that is conducted outside of traditional spheres. It can encompass anything, from your kid collecting bugs in traps in the backyard, to global apps like iNaturalist. While Caitlin will have an in-depth overview of exactly what citizen science entails next Monday, we’ll kick the month off by looking at revolutionary technology that has allowed non-scientists to participate in scientific research worldwide – social media.

Specifically Twitter. One of the most enjoyable things about Twitter’s scientific community has been the advent of SciComm games. These are (often weekly) posts by scientists from different fields, which ask fellow Twittererers to identify, find or pick apart different aspects of an ecosystem. They’re a great introduction to taxonomy and field identification, and they’re super-easy to get involved in.

So below I’ve listed (with the help of Twitter) 10 of the most fun Twitter games out there.

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Whales Are Fish: Weird Perspectives on Classification

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You would think that after researching how a species will react to climate change, which individuals are more likely to avoid predators, and what its DNA says about its evolutionary history, simply classifying what species an animal is would be pretty simple. Unfortunately that’s not the case. I distinctly recall being given the runaround by my primary school teacher when asked to define what a mammal was (according to the internet a coconut qualifies, so maybe that debate’s not over yet).

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Birds are Reptiles

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When one looks at birds like this puffin, it can be hard to reconcile its cute appearance with its place in the animal kingdom. The thing is, this adorable puffin has something in common with a rattlesnake, in that it’s a reptile (Image credit: Ray Hennessy, Unsplash licence, Image Cropped).

You read that correctly, birds are reptiles. Now, I can hear you saying “but we learned that they are a different group of organisms, and that reptiles are just those scaly animals that have cold blood?” While reptiles don’t have cold blood per se, some of them DO have feathers. And can fly. In this post I hope to convince you of the fact that the puffin pictured above, and all of its avian relatives, belong with the snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles in the reptile group.

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