Team: 36
School: Melrose High
Area of Science: Wildlife/Agriculture
Proposal: Mustangs of America
Me and my partner have always had a fascination with horses. After researching the topic thoughtfully, we have discovered that both wild mustangs and those in captivity have many problems. We intend to focus on two. Genetic defects are one of the main problems plaguing the species. This causes unwanted and possibly dangerous genes to be more prevalent. Another big problem would be diseases that the horses can get. Some are like the flu and can blow over within weeks, others are more substantial and stay with the horse for the rest of its life until it inevitably dies from the disease. Complicated terrain can also affect the horses for the worst, leading to casualties from broken bones or open wounds. Weather has another large impact, which can cause injuries to the horse, or alter the environment.
This project is about protecting the well-being of wild mustangs and benefiting a fascinating species. Though this project is not hands-on where we are going out into a pasture to inspect and round up wild mustangs, it fits our main goal for our presentation which is to better inform the public about the struggles that the horses must survive within their environment.
What we plan to do is to continue with our past project model that we made last year and to enhance it for this year's program. It uses NetLogo for its coding process and already has the basics commands of what the horses do such as eat and gain health, reproduce, move around, etc. The model also has the sliders and graphs that shows the different variables the populations, and how they are doing with the different situations we create in the coding to see the different outcomes. We also will add more buttons and possibly greater environmental effects.
Team Members:
Lily Macfarlane
Lilly Gallagher
Kate Barnhorn
Sponsoring Teacher: Alan Daugherty