2i's Tree of Life

Once a year we celebrate Halloween, Christmas, Easter and our homes are decorated with pumpkins, hearts and daffodils. In 2i at Nørre Gymnasium once a year, we celebrate life by taking out all our pickled, stuffed, dried and pinned animals which are stowed away from a time before the use of PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos.

Once they are out from their hiding places, we organize them according to their phylogenetic relationships to celebrate Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking idea of our common descent.

The students start by sorting the animals to family, order, class and phylum and discuss what structures this classification is based upon. After this, they will organize them into higher taxonomic groups, and arrange them in their evolutionary order to build the "Tree of life" for all animals.