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Understanding Medical Terminology: Body Parts Welcome to the final part of understanding medical terminology: body parts and organs. Like everything else we’ve discussed so far, there are specific word roots for all the organs and body-parts. They are rooted in Greek and Latin, unsurprisingly. Greek and Latin is even combined for certain terminology. Let’s look…
Venomous Snakes There are about 600 venomous snake species in the world. Of those, about 200 are considered deadly to humans. They produce venom which is injected by their fangs during a bite, in order to kill prey, defend themselves and even aid in digestion of their meal. It’s important to make a distinction between…
Roots of Colour Understanding medical terminology – colour, position and quantity. These word roots are essential for accurate descriptions of medical and anatomical items. Many words used to describe the colour of something in the medical world exist. Both Latin and Greek roots are used for the most part with the exception of yellow which…
Snake Senses and Physiology Snake Eyes No, not when you roll a one on a dice. Actual snake eyes, on actual snakes. We’re talking about snake senses and physiology. Snakes generally have good vision, some of them have slitted pupils like cats. All snakes lack eyelids, instead they have a clear scale covering the eye…
Understanding Medical Terminology – Suffixes Last week we talked about prefixes, descriptors attached to the beginning of medical terms. Today we’re going to talk about understanding medical suffixes, attached to the end of medical terminology to add clarity and further description. There’s a lot to go through, so I’ve organised some of the most important…
In honour of this being the Year of the Snake, I thought we could talk about snakes. They are a common phobia, and culturally they have had quite an impact on human society. From the Garden of Eden to Cleopatra’s death, snakes are often thought of as evil or dangerous. Yet other people love them…
Medical Terminology – Prefixes Welcome to part one of my new series for February, helping you in understanding medical terminology, prefixes, suffixes and the history of medical language. This will not be an exhaustive list of terms, as there are hundreds of them and it can be a lot to remember. That said, I want…
Creature Feature: Fight Or Flight Response Most people are aware of this process in some fashion. Fight-or-flight, or fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn comes from a phsyiological response to a perceived threat or attack. It involves a number of physiological responses within the body in response to danger. This enables the animal to fight or flee. It goes by…
Survival Strategies Using Colour Animals use colour strategies in all kinds of ways to avoid being detected, eaten or to express themselves in some way. Some creatures can see colours we can’t, like infra-red and ultraviolet, which are not on the ‘visible spectrum’ of light. The visible spectrum is defined as what we can see…
Reproduction Strategies So, we discussed last time the difference between prey and predator, and how this impacts animal behaviour and physiology. Different species employ different strategies to ensure their species survives, and nowhere is that more apparent than in reproduction. I know in school, lots of people spent this part of biology making crude jokes…
