Dissection is fun!

Got another opportunity to dissect a pig fetus. This is great stuff, I never get tired of it. Cause of death? Asphyxiation.  I spent the rest of the afternoon taking a peek at the liver, which by this point had turned blue from the dye used to make the arteries more pronounced. My primary focus was the digestive system, however. The sample I obtained had already been chopped up a bit, and apparently someone needs to get a part time job as a butcher because the incisions were horrible.

The esophagus had been punctured, the gallbladder had been accidentally cut out, and the rectum was also punctured. The smell was very lovely. However, what really won the day was the look on my partners face when we got the pig. She was acting all macho and brave before the corpses came out of the bucket. She covered her mouth and almost cried. All of that went away when I brought it to our table and told her that she was feeling emotional about a thing that was no longer living. I told her if she wanted to have sympathy for pigs, she should probably save it for the ones still alive. This one was quite dead, and no amount of crying would bring it back. It actually got her interested in the dissection, which is a good thing... She is utterly clueless with most of the material in the class.

Once again, I was first in line for the sample and the only person with the guts to make a few incisions to get a good look at every part of the anatomy I was interested in. Whoever did the initial dissection had left plenty of muscle tissue attached around the top of the ribcage, so the esophagus wasn't visible. I fixed that. That was when I found out that whoever cut it open had tried to stab their way through first. Then I got around to the liver, and noticed that also, the gallbladder had been removed. I was hoping for a sample of bile, whatever its' condition.

One embarrassing thing to note, however, was my inability to determine the sex of the sample at first. it appeared to have a penis, but no testes. Upon further inspection, there were also no ovaries. So, after making a few choice incisions, I was able to determine that the structure that appeared to be a penis was actually a uterine tube that had somehow been severed from the back of the tube, making it appear to be a penis. The two  separate holes on the inside gave it away.

All in all, a great experience. I will be spending the rest of the weekend looking up chemical composition of some of the organs, possibly starting with the liver. Though if I start with the liver, I may never get around to anything else. I love science.