Have you ever dissected an animal? [like in biology class?]

Don't think I replied to this one yet. I wound up doing the fetal pig in college bio class.

 

Re: Have you ever dissected an animal? [like in biology clas

I haven't dissected any kind of animal either but I've also worked with cadavers in my Anatomy class. It was... interesting, especially because sometimes the body wasn't complete, it was only a leg or the torso so it was weird. But I didn't find it as gross as you describe it, maybe most of them didn't smell because they were well preserved with formol? I guess that's the reason.

Well, where I study medicine you have to take Anatomy first and then you can become a dissector and "work" at the university morgue dissecting bodies for the classes. It's a free course but you have to study medicine at the university. Maybe there's something like that where you live, I'd suggest asking the universities in your area that teach medicine, biology, etc.

 

Ooo... a post about dissections... now this is my kinda topic! :hugegrin:

I've done quite a number of dissections, strangely, I've never dissected the same organism more than once. Which all things considering, is actually fairly unique.

First dissection was either grade 6 or 7 (I was in the same classroom for both, so I can't remember which year). It was a spider, not a tiny one, but not a large one either. Mostly looking at how the joints of the exoskeleton worked to compare it to what we knew of our own joints. It was simplistic, but fun.

Grade 10 science I had three dissections, earthworm, locust, and crayfish. I enjoyed the earthworm and locust more so than the crayfish, simply because the latter was essentially like opening up a small lobster. It didn't feel that special. Plus it was absolutely annoying to break into. The earthworm had been so simple to slice into and examine the digestive and circulatory systems, and the locust was amusingly squishy. :lol: I took Grade 11 biology the same year, and there we dissected a perch, a squid, and a rat. Again, the fish was fairly boring for me (I'd seen relatives clean and fillet fish). The squid was fascinating, but my group's specimen hadn't been preserved all that well, so it wasn't spectacular. The rat was a different story. My group had got dibs on the rat of our choice, and we asked for the pregnant female. Well, our teacher assumed the extremely plump rat was the pregnant female. However, I discovered during the pelvic dissection that not only was our rat not pregnant, it wasn't female. It however was extremely well preserved. Curiously, I'm wondering if one of the posters from 2005 might have been in my bio class, as the teacher instructed the class to attempt to get to the brain - and one student smashed their way through, much to the surprise of the teacher :guffaw:

When I took physics in grade 11, I too dissected the cow eye. It really is beautiful inside. And unlike some of my classmates, I knew to stand away from the dissection... a few people got a mouthful. Yum. :guffaw:

My OAC (grade 13... it no longer exists, I was the second last year in Ontario to have OAC) bio I took during my grade 12 year. We didn't do any complete dissections, just organs. One was a sheep's heart, and the other was the sheep's brain. The heart was nice, but by that point in biology, we'd covered texts of the heart and circulatory system so many times that it was pretty well like looking at a model. The brain was what I was giddy over. I loved being able to look at the internal structures of the brain, to see how circulation was set up considering the blood-brain barrier. The differences in the texture and appearance of the various structures. It was stunning. But I've always been a neurology-geek.

That same year I was also doing a co-op placement at the local hospital. The head nurse on the post-surgical ward I was in liked me a LOT. I got to engage in a lot of things that I was BEYOND lucky to be permitted to experience. One afternoon I got to assist in rotating and holding a patient still while an epidural was put in place. However, that was nothing compared to the fact the nurse arranged with a surgeon for me to be able to scrub in to observe three operations. I got to stand only a couple feet away while the surgeon performed a nose job, a carpel tunnel surgery, and the removal of hardware and stabilization of tendons in the hand to the middle and ring finger. It was absolutely amazing. :adore:

In university, I did dozens of dissections. Sea urchin, mud puppy, shark, pigeon, fetal pig, mouse, frog, more organs, and cockroaches. I won't go into detail about all of them... just the fun/creepy points.

Fetal Pig - When preparing a specimen for dissection, they often inject blue and red dye into the veins and arteries in order to make them more visible. Well lucky me, I got a specimen where they decided to set the dial to 11... the insides looked like brown goo and entire circulatory system was blown to bits.
Frog - Heh, this one was partly to examine the impact of neuro-electrical impulses on the muscles. So we were actually instructed to dissect our frog's legs, place them into a crouched position, and then attach an electric impulse to their muscle. Jump frog, jump!
Mouse/Organ dissections - These were the hardest ones for me. They were for histological studies, and we had to work with 'fresh' organs. I'd made friends with the mouse before class, before I realized that it was going to be our experiment. I struggled a lot with it because the specimens were still warm when we got them.
Cockroaches - Doing enzymatic studies. For background knowledge, my building had a cockroach problem, so I already was creeped out by them. We had to pin them, still alive, and remove a certain length of their digestive system. I had to get my lab partner to do this one, just touching the cockroach had me squirming... and I STILL have nightmares.

Overall though, I love biology... and loved dissections. I still have all my books and notes and sketches going back to tenth grade science. Even with the couple of really awful ones, I wouldn't trade the other experiences for anything in the world. Well, except maybe a chance to observe a few dozen in depth brain surgeries or intense studies of the impacts of lesions/insult/pressure/etc on various portions of the brain. But again, I'm a neurology-geek.

 

Oh lucky people. We haven't done it in usual school. I think they kinda thinks it's not for the kids or something like that, probably parents would start to sent letters to school for teaching children how to slice up animals.
But seriously I feel I'd appreciate dissection more than just book illustrations. Maybe even turn me to science completely.
Hello, I've done it w/ flies why not something bigger? I know my friend will be doing dissection next year in her prof school veterinary course so I wish by the time I'll be joining to that school.
I don't scare yet of those things and I think it's better to let students learn things than just stare at pictures hoping that'll help.
Even my mom did dissections at her school years so why not in this century too? Was that really too hard to provide that to all schools? I haven't even seen a microscope not mentioning touching it or looking into it, I've seen them only on tv.
I guess this country thinks differently about us, students.
Sorry if this was off topic, I just wanted to expose my thoughts about this subject since I haven't had chance of doing it myself.

 

Back in grade 6, we dissected fish in class. I mostly remember frying and eating it afterwards (I had an awesome grade 6 teacher ).

I didn't take biology in high school, mostly because I didn't want to cut things up. Definitely more into physics and computer science - things that don't smell funny!

 

::laughs:: I actually never minded the smell of the preservatives.

I myself found the scents that I encountered in chemistry to generally be the worse option. The biological sciences buildings at university always smelled like a hospital, whereas the chemical sciences buildings often smelled of sulphur. Physics is the only one that never really smelled like anything LOL!

BlueDiamondStar - It is a shame that you haven't been given the opportunity to do the dissections. I do think it is a very important aspect to understanding biology. I'm also a full supporter of alternative methods for those who are not comfortable with dissections for whatever reasons. But there should be an option available on both sides. Funding can be problematic though, and if you've not had access to microscopes, that may well be the issue. It really is a shame, and hopefully one day you'll get the opportunity to experience it should you wish to further continue in biology.

 

Thanks Otie.
I do understand that there're enough people who're uncomfortable with things like that but really not all. I believe it was mostly school's budget thing and partly teacher's wish.
In my first school we weren't allowed to touch the only microscope b/c ''we could brake it''. Yeah boys maybe but not girls.
Well at least chemistry was more fun with doing reactions.
Hopefully I get the place into that prof school, and if I get in they're doing dissections on course 2 so I might have the chance

 

::grins:: Yeah, microscopes can be very expensive, and fairly delicate too. I know the ones I had access to in high school were around $1000/scope, whereas the ones in university were about $10000/scope... and all it takes is someone wiping one of the lenses wrong. Can't tell you how many times I heard lab instructors in upper year bio courses screaming at people for forgetting to do an oil immersion for a lens of magnification 100X (without the oil on the slide, the lens can scrap against the slide itself, resulting in scuffing/scratching/chipping). And this was in classes with students in their 20's who had been getting lessons on proper handling of microscopes at the start of every lab course for at LEAST the previous four years. So for a school with only one microscope, I can see why they're overly protective of it :lol:

Just don't pull a Grissom and begin performing necropsies on random deceased animals in your neighborhood :guffaw: In all seriousness, there's a LOT of health risks in that... without the proper training and precautions, there's a LOT of potentially deadly bacterial and viral organisms that such an activity could expose one too. His character got off lucky... LOL!

 

Yeah I guess. My classmates weren't the most caring people so it was fairly reasonable but it could've been shown to girls and few of those guys who weren't that chaotic ones.
But I think they just didn't want to bother about microscopes when there were books in front of us. I see that it was just to make sure we see the microscope at all since it was just grade 6 then, so we won't feel like complete fools later years. Knowing that school I really wouldn't be surprised it was just pure laziness.
The other school probably didn't have equipment since for chemistry all chemicals and stuff were like 30 years old including all equipment.
But EU gave some money which was enough for new tv's and dvd's and reconstruction of chemistry/biology classroom.

LOL the mention of a fetal pig reminded me of Grissom.
Really hope the EU won't cut the scholarship next year, if so then I won't sign up for studies.

Yeah agree it could be also dangerous and bacterial stuff. All can be done is to wear protection like in a lab