The Newbie

Today, I stepped into a whole new world and had no clue what was expected of me. I felt like a child lost in a store, and the store was Twitter. I have other social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, but Twitter unexpectedly took me by surprise. I mean, I am a teenager who is supposed to understand everything related to technology, yet I struggled a little. Thankfully, it did not take me long to understand how to maneuver through Twitter.

Furthermore, I did follow a few people and organizations who I think will be very beneficial for this course. I have to admit, it took some time trying to find the right profiles that had the same interests as me. To be more specific, one person and one organization who I think will help me tremendously when it comes to conducting research about animal science and rights are Joan Silk, @jbsilk1, and The Predator Conservation, @BPCTcamp. Joan Silk is a behavioral ecologist, evolutionary anthropologist, and enthusiast about adaptation. In addition, The Predator Conservation aims to protect large African carnivores, like lions, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs, and African wild dogs, along with their habitats. I hope the tweets created by Joan Silk and The Predator Conservation will help guide me in the research process.

I had to tweet and retweet which took awhile as well. I tried to look ahead in this course and therefore tweeted and retweeted about a variety of topics. I was hoping this would provide me with many different facts about multiple animals that I could potentially utilize in the future. Some aspects that I did mention dealt with animal friendship, intelligence, consciousness, society, behavior, and cruelty. I am interested in all these topics for further research, but my top two would be animal society and behavior. I find it intriguing how animals function and communicate in a group in order to survive and thrive in the wild. Two profiles I retweeted that focused on these aspects were Kirsten Henry's, @KirstenHenry, and Oceana's, @oceana. Both of these profiles had valuable information that I could see myself including in my research.

I learned a lot of shocking information when reading tweets and following links included in other tweets. The most surprising fact I found illustrated the ages of certain animals when they are killed for food. For instance, pigs naturally live for about twelve years, but humans kill them when they are only six-months-old. Another fact I learned using this process was that squirrels live longer and breed more successfully when they live around other familiar squirrels. These facts immediately caught my attention and I would love to learn more about them.

So far, I feel comfortable with this platform and understand how to use it. Despite this, I still wonder if there is an easier way to find profiles and tweets that relate to this course's material.