Cat Dissection
By Charlie Miller
This week, seniors and juniors taking physiology 1 are dissecting cats during class.
“I think it’s fun, and I try to make the most out of it because I don’t get to do things hands on like this everyday,” Jax Bauer, a student in physiology 1, stated.
The objective of this is to help students understand and learn about internal organs and their functions. “The reason we dissect them is because when we teach about the human body. It's one thing you have to visualize in your mind, but to actually see it, is what makes it more realistic,” Deb Koehlmoos, the physiology teacher, claimed.
A cat is a mammal like we humans, so there are very few differences between a cat and a human as far as internal organs, aso they can name muscles, and go through the digestive system.
First, they will prepare the cat for dissection by simply putting its belly surface up on the dissecting table.
They will then identify the gender of the cat, and follow the instructions for skinning the cat. They do that so they can identify muscles and track everything through their digestive system because they just got done learning about it, and now they can now bring it to life.
Cat dissection is a class tradition that wraps up the student learning.
