Samwise Gamgee Essays - Forest Ecology, Rainforest, Tree, Canopy

Samwise Gamgee What exactly is a rain forest, you say? Well, on the outside, a rain forest has a wall averaging 20 feet thick that is made of a tangle of vines that love light. This wall seals off the interior creating the illusion that the whole jungle is this thick. But if you find an animal path or stream to follow, you can slip through and enter this mysterious world. Once you're inside, you can look up and see a tree canopy that's as high as a 17 story building! And it's pretty dark too, a perpetual twilight. Only 1% of the sunlight ever actually touches the floor of the forest. And moonlight, even a full moon, doesn't get through at all. You'd better have a flashlight with you if you plan on reading any comics. Rain forests have different layers that support different animals and insects. Some plants and animals occupy specific layers, while others live and feed wherever they can. I live in the lower canopy of the South American rain forest because a lot of the fruit I like to eat is found there. The tallest trees in the canopy layer grow up to 200 feet high. Some of the trees that poke through (called the "emergents") have been known to grow as high as 270 feet. It is not uncommon for the expansive umbrella crown of an emergent tree to cover an entire acre. Now there's a good spot for a treehouse. Many types of indigenous people live in rain forests. The environment is perfect for tribes of hunter-gatherers. Local materials are used to make their blow guns, spears, and arrows. The forest also provides building and roofing materials, wild cotton for clothing, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and more. In fact, just about every need can be met by the rain forest. For these people, the rain forest is like living in a gigantic mall. Amazonian deep-forest Yanomamo are a group of forest people that can literally run up heavy trunked emergent trees (over 200 feet) without breaking a sweat. It's because of their remarkably wide feet, which also have advantages running around the muddy rain forest floors. The Pygmies are a tribe of honey gatherers that rely almost exclusively on the help of a bird called the Greater Honeyguide to direct them to the beehives. This little bird leads the Pygmies with its rasping, churring chatter and its white outer tail feathers to point out the proper tree. The bird lives on beeswax, so after the Pygmies climb the tree with a bundle of smoking leaves to put the bees to sleep, they take the honey and leave the beeswax behind as a reward for the bird. Here you'll find bats with wingspans up to 5.5 feet, moths with wingspans of 12 inches, frogs so big they could eat rats, and rats themselves weighing up to 100 pounds. Let's take a closer look at just a few of the interesting animals and insects that live in the rain forrest. Piranha, The piranha is a small fish that is activated into a feeding frenzy by the smell of blood. Their teeth are so sharp that they can strip a 100 pound animal to the bone in a minute. No telling what they could do to a person unlucky enough to go for a swim at the wrong time! Large electric eels live in tropical rivers. Their bodies can generate enough electricity to knock a person senseless and, in some cases, can cause drowning. "Shocking" ... but true. Anacondas can even swallow a crocodile. The anaconda is a water boa and it is the largest snake in the world at 37.5 feet long and weighing over 500 pounds. They've been known to eat people now and then, although they don't make a regular diet of humans. Boa, oh boa that's a lotta snake! In every rain forest there are many kinds of plants. Many, many, many kinds of plants. In fact, inside a single hectare (2.47 acres) you can find up to 750 types of trees and 1,500 types of plants! But this entire range of species can easily be broken down into four categories, grouped by how they

Community College ESL Placement Test Essay - How to Write an Essay on a Subject Youre Familiar With

Community College ESL Placement Test Essay - How to Write an Essay on a Subject You're Familiar WithMost community colleges offer a placement test that helps students gain an awareness of the subjects they may need to work on in their ESL classes. These tests are helpful, but if you want to increase your scores, you can take the time to consider a sample topic and write an essay on that subject instead.The community college test is easy to get and, more importantly, takes less than an hour to complete. An exam to be on a test gives you one or two questions to answer, typically on a multiple-choice format. Before the test, you already know the kinds of issues that concern you in the ESL environment.You should choose a question that you can easily relate to. It doesn't have to be a difficult question; it could be something that requires general knowledge of your home country or your current school. You may even ask what kind of issues may arise in the future. Regardless of what you cho ose to cover, you need to know where you stand in terms of knowledge so that you can work on it.Having this knowledge before you even sit for the community college placement test will help you prepare for your writing skills. By knowing what you're likely to find on the test, you can set the tone of your essay for the most part.Some students will take this test simply to satisfy a long term need for knowledge. Others will take it to see if they'll need to take ESL classes and take the opportunity to review their topics in greater detail. Even the one or two students who choose to take the test just for fun will get some benefit from the knowledge.When you take the test essay, you need to be prepared. If you aren't familiar with a certain topic, read about it before you write. This allows you to choose a question that has some relation to your interests and introduces your topic better than one that you're not familiar with.There are free online resources that you can use to get the information you need. Look through some of the online forums on ESL education to get an idea of the topics that interest you. Once you're familiar with the theme of the test, you'll be able to discuss it without feeling self-conscious.If you write your essay on a topic that you're already familiar with, you'll be able to spend more time on other aspects of the essay that you're more likely to enjoy. In addition, by completing the test essay with an understanding of the subject, you'll find it easier to answer the questions that you need to.