bukit timah day 1

the 5 of us- christine, subra, wilbur, chun han and i had a trek in bukit timah hill in the rain today. when going down the slope, we saw a school of japanese kids, probably 9 or 10 years old. its propotional isnt it? 15 yr old vips climbing mt fugi and 9 to 10 yr olds climbing bukit timah. plus, it was raining in both cases. haha

our mentor was ms wang, and she went through the scientific method with us and we were asked to come up with 5 questions each when trekking. some of my questions were not scientific ones, according to her. like whether the part of the forest i saw near the path was representative of the entire forest. and rather than questioning why most of the leaves were dark green (which is common), a better question would be like "why are some leaves red?" which is questioning the uncommon/abnormal.

there were questions like "why is moss slippery?"and ms wang said that that was not a good question too, simply because moss contains water. another question was whether vines could identify what was supporting it on its upward climb. for example, if a vine is placed in between a tree and a lamp post, which one would it choose to attach to?

a good question asked by christine was why was it that some leaves on the same plant had different shapes. shes really observant i must say, i never ever thought of that question or even paid close attention to the consistency of the shapes of leaves.

why are there so many plant species? apparently this is a huge question for many scientists and there is no answer for it yet. i thought it was simply because the wind and sea is favourable and blows all the seeds over to the tropics and because of favourable conditions, many animals like to travel here, bringing over the seeds. ms wang said something about competition but she didnt elaborate.

she gave mr teo 5 research topics and he picked how landscape patterns affect ecology. another topic was to study the behaviour of orangutans and to suggest possible improvement to the orangutans' life. isnt it interesting? i havent been to the zoo for a long long time and it would be fun to observe how much time the animals spend scratching each other, swinging around or basking in the sun. it would be especially rewarding to have our plan getting accepted, and perhaps improving their lives by building a playground or having a bigger enclosure.

i asked ms wang what our research topic of how landscape patterns affect ecology would lead to and she said that perhaps bukit timah nature reserve could be linked back to the central catchment area which was divided by the construction of BKE. by building a bridge for the animals to cross? i have no idea how it can be done.