Question: What is your second favorite star and what animal do you think is most useful to us humans?

Matthew Lee answered on 12 Jun 2017:

I dont even have a favourite star let alone a second favourite!

The animal most useful to humans is one of 3, either the mouse, fruit fly (drosophila), or the nematode worm (c elegans). These are what we call model organisms and we use them to do experiments that we can’t do in humans. These are the most well studied animals which is why we call them ‘model organisms’, so we know almost everything there is to know about them. They also have very similar (a lot of the time it is the same!) genes and pathways to us humans, which is really cool!