Wednesday 24 August 2016

Biorhythm

A rabbit is active at dawn and dusk.  Its normal activity is recorded in a lab for 6 days, then recorded in constant darkness for another 10 days.  There is still a pattern to the rabbits behaviour but it starts 20 mins later each day.  

Zeitgeber, entrained, biological clock, endogenous, exogenous, circadian, circa tidal, phase shift, period of, nocturnal, diurnal, crepuscular, biorhythm, free running.  

In class today we had to rewrite the paragraph above but had to rewrite it using the list of words (also above).  Here is my finished result:

A rabbit is a crepuscular animal, meaning it is active at dawn to dusk.  This also means that the rabbit is neither nocturnal (active during the night) or diurnal (active during the day).  The rabbits biorhythm is circadian, not circa tidal, which means that the activity happens daily during a period of 24 hours.  The biorhythm of the rabbit cannot be circa tidal as the rabbit does not live near the sea/tides.  Because the rabbit is still active even after the zeitgeber has been taken away this means that the rabbit's rhythm is endogenous, not exogenous.  The rabbit is being entrained as the biological clock is being reset (before the zeitgeber is taken away).  The rabbit's rhythm becomes free running as the rabbit is still active in a regular pattern even after the external cue is removed.  The phase shift of the rabbit starts to occur 20 mins later after the zeitgeber was taken away.

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