Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Frog Dissection

    To start off, our class started on our frog dissection on Tuesday the thirteenth and finished dissecting on Wednesday the fourteenth. Our goal was to be able to relate the systems of the frog to the systems of a human being. However, the main systems my group and I saw were the digestive system, the endocrine system, the urinary system, the nervous system, the respiratory system, and the circulatory system.
    After wearing our goggles and gloves, our frog was first put onto our tray. Then, our group opened up the frog by first "peeling" the layer of the skin and then the layer of the muscle on the ventral side of the frog. After we opened the frog, we found out right away that the frog was a female. This is because her eggs were all inside. The part that surprised me was the fact the eggs were not in one section. I thought that the eggs would either be in a sac or altogether covered by peritoneum, which is a membrane that covers the organs to keep it together. However, the eggs were not in one place nor were they in a sac; they were everywhere. After we took out the eggs, we identified the organs. The first organ we saw was the liver. The liver is the largest structure of the body cavity and is composed of three parts. Its job is to produce bile which helps digests fats. Another organ was the heart. The heart has the job of pumping the blood throughout the body to keep this organism alive. There were other organs such as fat bodies (which all frogs need), the lungs (which is what the frogs needs to breathe), the gull bladder, the stomach, both the small and large intestine, the spleen, esophagus, and many other organs as well.
    After identifying the gender and the organs, our dissection was now complete. I learned many new things from this dissection. First, the fact that frog guts do not smell very nice. Second, I learned that all systems humans have, other organisms have as well. Lastly, I learned that the systems of humans and of frogs have all the same function and that by using a frog as an example, we are able to have an idea on how some of our organs look, especially because most of human organs look similar to the ones of a frog.


http://www.scientificillustrator.com/illustration/amphibians/leopard_frog.html

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-gloves-and-goggles-image1413723
                

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