Quick, find the carotid artery!

Dissecting pigs is a dirty, dirty job. Sort of like that discovery channel show, Dirty Jobs, except for real this time. A few days ago some of us were given fetal pigs (taken out of a mommy pig's womb!!?!?!?) to dissect. "Just take the scissors and slice it open from chin to tail! Have fun!", was what they told us. After getting over our initial disgust, we did just that. I was kind of looking forward to saying "Pass me the scalpel, quick!", but it turns out scalpels aren't used in this brand of dissection.

When we looked down at the dissection tray, we saw a small, shriveled innocent looking thing, pink with translucent hairs dotting its 9-inch long body. We felt a little bit cruel and sad at the beginning for cutting open this seemingly innocent creature, but then the stench of pig and formaldehyde made us forget our previous sympathies... and so, we butchered the thing.

Actually, we were just looking for most of the major organs in the pig like the lungs, heart, kidneys, stomach etc. After getting the academic part of the assignment done, we decided to have some fun with the pig. Yup, I totally went to town on that sucker. I sort of... sliced off the muscle on its left arm (to get better access to the neck), butchered its heart and circulatory system (to see the arteries better) and broke most of its ribs (to drain its abdominal cavity of fluids, of course!)... which is probably why we're screwed for our evaluation tomorrow... kidding. After this, we cut out all its organs (stomach, liver, lungs, heart, intestines... although we were actually sort of supposed to do this)... examined them... and cut them up some more. We even got to look inside the pig's heart, which looks somewhat like a sponge with like 10 compartments.
Anyways, we came back to the lab 2 more times, each day the stench getting worse (we didn't have enough room in the refrigerator to store 20 fetal pigs, although I supposed to smell of formaldehyde is preferable to that of rotting tissue) to further slice 'n dice the little piggy that went to the market.

I guess all in all it was a pretty fun experience, getting to poke and probe at the viscera of an animal eerily similar to ourselves (not the pig, but how the makeup of it's insides is almost the exact same as a human's). More importantly though, it made me realize that taking biology and more specifically, agreeing to get my hands dirty was not a bad decision; I had this idea from the beginning that I would not want to participate in the dissection at all! Turns out, I ended up doing most of the cutting and not feeling squeamish in the least! I guess that just proves that you shouldn't be closed minded... especially with food. I can't even express how much I missed out on by not eating

• crab,
• lobster,
• mushrooms,
• shrimp

and other generally expensive seafood in my younger years... what a waste (*blargh*).

kamster