Today we had a visit from Colin, who is a zoologist. Colin had lots of interesting activities planned for us to help us think more about our topic, animals and their rights.
He showed us pictures of different mammals and then we went outside to try to work out how large these animals were in comparison to us. It turns out that a blue whale is about 30M long and if we all stand in a line, holding hands, including Colin, Ms Reid and Mrs Cameron, we are just about the same length as 1 blue whale. If we all stand together in a bunch, we would all fit inside a the mouth of a blue whale. If we were inside it’s mouth, we wouldn’t have to worry because they don’t eat children and they don’t actually even have proper teeth. Colin told us that they don’t have to chew food so they don’t have real teeth!
Cheetahs can run at 70mph and we all had a go at running to see if we could go as fast as a cheetah, or at least to see which animal we can run as fast as. We timed each other running across the playground and compared ourselves to different animals. We were all faster than a 3 toed sloth and a hedgehog. Most of us were not as fast as a pig but Walter was actually a bit faster than a pig. None of us were as fast as a squirrel but that was the one that most of us were close to. Maybe if we keep training, we could win a race with a squirrel?
Colin told us about Orca’s and how they like to live in big family groups. We measured 10M along the playground, which is roughly the size of an Orca and then had a think about what size of tank you would need if you wanted to keep an Orca in a zoo. We talked about its size, how far they liked to swim and that they really only are happy if they are with a group. We thought about all of this and then Mrs Cameron asked us to vote on whether we thought it was fair to keep Orcas in zoos. Most of us voted for definitely not fair and the rest of us were not sure. No one thought it was fair to keep Orcas in zoos. Zoha explained that she voted for not fair because she knew Orcas needed lots and lots of space to swim and have friends and no zoo could really be big enough to let that happen. Later this week we are going to think about this question, with regard to other animals that are kept in zoos and come up with ideas on what we would have to provide the animals with to make sure they got their rights.
