Zoology High School Courses?

[Book Worm]

I am doing a research paper for zoology and I know all of the high school courses I have to take but the only problam is that I don't know why they are so important. I know that science and math will help, but how?

[Lindsay L]

Well, zoology is a science, for starters. There are many different sides to the study of animals that include all parts of science. Yes, chemistry and physics make their way into zoological studies too, not just basic biology.

Physics determines things like the force a muscle can apply to an appendage, or the speed of blood flowing through veins and arteries. How fast a cheetah can run is completely based on physics!

Your body functions based on millions of different types of chemical reactions, ranging from simple (like glycolysis) to astoundingly complex. And, of course, zoology is a branch of biology, but knowing how cells function can be very important to understanding how an animal's adaptations can help it survive in its environment, and understanding how the environment works can help you understand why the animal has adapted to it, or how the animal is affected by changes in the environment.

Math is important mostly because in zoology, when you do research you have to do a lot of statistics to decide if your results actually mean something, or if there is a good chance they could happen randomly. There are also some portions of zoology that are very heavily math based - many types of ecology rely on mathamatical models or complex equations to answer research questions. For example, some mathamatical equations can calculate the probability that two individuals are related (sibling, mother/father etc) based on results from genetic analysis.

Don't worry though, its not ALL complicated - a lot of it is just a lot of adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. For example, you can estimate the number of animals in a given area if you take a sample from that area and do some basic math.

Really, there are hundreds of facets of zoology - physiology, genetics, evolution, anatomy, classifications, ecology, modelling, etc, etc... the trick is you have to know which one you want to go into.