Frog Dissection (Biology)

I guess it was about time we chopped something up yeah?

Note : This is a detailed description of the dissection class. Currently I have no pictures to show, but I'll upload them when I get them from my classmates.

Pn. Hasmizan really picked a good date to do this gory yet fun event. A Saturday replacement school day, usually our class will have quite alot of absent students, but since teacher wanted to do a dissection on this particular day, I am proud to say that our class had a full attendance (with the exception of Win Meng, and Zheng Hoe came but wasn't in class). Even Suki who had a fever, still came for the frog dissection.

Before Biology class it was Puan Shi's class. And when the bell rung and she didn't hear it, the students were already begging her to let us go to the Biology lab. And soon everyone was rushing out from the classroom to the Biology lab (most of them stopped by the restroom first). I reached the Biology lab first, and the lab assistant asked me to help in holding that frog-filled plastic bag. I never thought that the frogs's size were THAT big. They were bigger than my palm outstretched.

5 frogs in a white plastic bag. The smell is terrible too. The lab assistant took some cotton wool, and dabbed some chlorofoam onto it. Then, I opened a little hole for the lab assistant to put in the chlorofoam dabbed cotton. And I closed the bad tight. The frogs began struggling and jumping non stop. It seemed that one cotton wasn't enough, so the lab assistant put in another one, followed by the last cotton. Soon the plastic bag became still - frogs knocked out cold.

By now all the students reached the Biology lab already, and I took the plastic bag from the chemical store room into the main lab hall. I took a couple of gloves and put'em on as told by the teacher while she was explaining to the students how to dissect the frog properly by using the dissection tools. It seemed that nobody dared to take the frogs out of the plastic bag, so I volunteered. I have 2 reasons for this :
1. If nobody wants to do it, then there will be no dissection, simple as that.
2. Since I'm thinking of being a Zoologist, might as well try this stuff ANYWAY...

I reached down into the plastic bag and got a grip on the first frog. My first impression - Slimy... And that wasn't all, its soft, slimy and squishy stomach added to the difficulty of taking it out. So I had to put my palm under the whole frog and lift it out. The sensation was oh-so-slimy-and-yuckish. I'd be better of with snakes. And my ears were sore from the non stop high pitched screaming and wailing of the girls (which is even worse because there are more girls than boys in my class). I distributed the 5 frogs to the 5 groups. I washed my gloves clean and got ready for the dissection.

In the dissection kit, there were
A magnifying glass (Organ close up?)
2 Scapels (Slice and dice with it, but these were too rusty and blunt)
2 pincers (Pinch and pull the organs/skin with this)
2 scissors (There are 2 different scissors, one was easier to cut with)
4 pins (To hold the frog down in a cross shape incase the chlorofoam wears off and it jumps around)

We started by pinning the frogs limbs onto the dissection board. We pinched up the skin, and started cutting it open. We could see muscles, flesh, blood vessels everything. Once the skin was wide opened, we proceeded to cut through the flesh. And the first thing that came out the hole - some black stuff with white spots. Bingo, eggs, we have ourselves a female frog. Apparently these eggs weren't fertilised yet, as frogs do external fertilisation instead of internal. And as we cut more of the flesh, more eggs squeezed out of the open wound. We had to really open a big wound to see the interior. We removed the eggs, and voila, the intestines, stomach, lungs, kidney all still there. And the heart was still beating.

Then I stopped and thought "Where's the air sac?". All the other groups had one big inflated pinkish organ (air sac) but our frog didn't have one. Well that would be impossible now would it? Unless somebody burst it by accident. Or maybe it wasn't inflated when the frog passed out. We continued to explore the interior. The intestines were absolutely LONG. I can say that 60% of the frog's interior were the intestines. We dug deep in until we reached the spinal cord (Wow dude lol). By that time, Biology class time was almost up. We put the frogs in a red container to be buried. The dissection tools were washed and immersed in disinfection fluid (Dettol) and the gloves were disposed.

We left the class and went to the canteen for reccess. It was a fun and knowledgeable experience, but some classmates had lost the appetite to eat...

Oh well. That's all folks!