Lycaon Pictus

Welcome

Hello! Welcome to my first action project for my STEAM course named Population. In this class we learned about taxonomy, sets and subsets, Carl Linnaeus, and more. Over the summer, we were assigned to read a book named, In The Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall. I enjoyed this book because I got to learn about some similarities and differences between chimpanzees and humans. It actually turns out that there are a lot more similarities than differences. We also took a Field Experience to the Lincoln Park Zoo, where we chose an animal and observed its behaviors. I chose the African Painted Dog. I chose this organism because I did not have much knowledge about them so I thought that it was the perfect opportunity for me to learn about them. Below is some research that I gathered up about African Painted Dogs.

Intro
The largest populations of the African Painted Dog remains in Southern Africa and some parts of southern East Africa. African Painted Dogs are usually social and travel in packs of 10 to 40 dogs. They have a lifespan of 11 years. These Dogs habitat is the Savanna and in arid zones. African Painted Dogs are naturally good hunters and they usually eat medium-size antelopes and wildebeest animals. Wild dogs may contract diseases such as distemper or rabies from domestic dogs. The scientific name for an African Painted Dog is Lycaon pictus. 

Keats, Derek. African painted dog(2016)

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a system used by scientist to classify organisms by using these 7 levels:

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. I made a taxonomy chart down below.

The taxonomic order of an African Painted dog:

Taxonomic Level	Organism’s group	Key characteristics of group
Kingdom	Animalia	Multicellular, heterotrophic, and reproduce sexually.
Phylum	chordata	Vertebrates, has a notochord, and dorsal hollow nerve cord.
Class	mammal	Sweat glands, warm blooded, and middle ear bones.
Order	carnivora	Upper premolar, lower molar, and carnassial
Family	canidae	Hunting, eat other animals, acute senses of hearing and smell.
Genus	lycaon	Scientific name for african painted dog.
Species	African Painted Dog	Average life span 11 years, carnivorous, humans are predators.

GR. Taxonomy.(2017) 

Keats, Derek. African Painted Dog. (2017)

After I found the taxonomic levels of African Painted Dogs, I was partnered up with two of my classmates to compare our organisms. My partners were MT and SR. Their organisms were Eurasian Lynx and Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey. We were asked to fined the similarities and differences between our animals so we decided to make a Venn diagram.If you want to learn more about the Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey, click here (SR). If you want to learn more about the Eurasian Lynx click here (MT). If you look down below, you will find the diagram that my partners and I have created.

  

GR, SR, MT.Group Venn Diagram.(2018)

                               

  Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey

SR.TitiMonkey.2018

Eurasian Lynx

Creativecommons.org (2018)

                                             
Calculations

Along with learning about taxonomy, we also learned about set theory statements. Set theory statements are mathematical statements used to examine weather an object belongs or doesn't belong to a group. This mathematical language uses different symbols to represent a meaning. For an example, ∈ is the symbol for element. Blow is a few set theory statements that I have made about African Painted Dogs.

1.  African Painted Dogs ∈ Carnivora

African Painted Dogs are an element in the set of Carnivora 

2.  African Painted Dogs ∉ Primates

African Painted Dogs  is not in the set of Primates 

3. African Painted Dogs ∉ (Primates ⋃ Arthropoda)

African Painted Dogs is not an element of Primates or Arthropoda

4. African Painted Dogs  ∈ (Mammalia ⋃ Carnivora)

African Painted Dogs is an element of Mammalia or Carnivora 

5. African Painted Dogs ⋂ Fennec Foxes  ∈ Family Canidae
The intersection of African Dogs and Fennec Foxes is element Family Canidae

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed this action project. I went from not know anything about African Painted Dogs to knowing about their taxonomic levels. I'm glad that I was able to step out of my comfort zone by drawing which I don't do a lot of. One thing that I did struggle with on this action project was gathering everything into blogger and making it look neat. Although that was a struggle, I would say that this action project came along pretty nicely. I excited for the next couple of action project for this class.   

Citations
1. Lincoln Park Zoo, https://www.lpzoo.org/animal/african-painted-dog, September 22, 2018
2. Mulheisen, M.; C. Allen and C. Allen 2002. "Lycaon pictus" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed September 22, 2018 at http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Lycaon_pictus/
3. African Wildlife Foundation. https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/african-wild-dog
Web. Accessed September 22, 2018