Dairy Farm Reflection

What was my field trip to the Dairy Farm like? Well, we didn't see much dairy, and we didn't see much farm. Sadly, most of the original rainforest has been cut down to make way for dairy farming, but the jungle has taken most of its original land back. The soil here is dry, because there isn't much rain nowadays. We learned about a snake that could burrow underground by using its tail as a pick, but with the ground growing harder, this is growing increasingly difficult. Also, the forest is no longer shielded from wind, because of the BKE cutting down the guardian trees that block the wind, so the forest is being destroyed quickly. The soil is so dry, we might even see the extinction on certain burrowers in Singapore, which could topple the ecosystem. The soil in the SAS forest is also inhospitable for burrowers, so Bukit Timah, MacRitchie, and Botanic Gardens might also be facing the same problem.

Did you know, rubber seeds explode? When they have grown to a certain size, they disperse by firing a chemical explosion which launches the seeds into the air. In a light-poor area, this helps disperse the seed over large distance. The explosions that punctuated the cicadas in the forest scared lots of people in our group, but I think the most frightening of what Raj taught is about was the flying snake. By flattening its body, it can glide over fifty meters from the top of a tree (where in blazes are the aerodynamics of that?) and crash land into its preys face. Imagine being attacked by one of those...

Luckily, SAS doesn't have any of those.

Hopefully.

The Burrowing and Probably Harmless Snake