I am taking an Anatomy class this semester and find myself frustrated with the fact that we are using cadaver cats for lab dissection. The required text and lab manual are for human cadavers only and do not have a cat equivalent. Does anybody have any suggestions as to a human lab manual I can purchase, (not to expensive) that focuses on the use of cats?
Thanks! I did see this manual on Amazon, but I am hesitant to purchase it without having seen the inside. Have you used this one? Did you like it?
Not my bailiwick, I’m afraid. Roomie said her book didn’t have a section on cat dissection (though they did dissect cats).
Note to self: I think I may have found a greater utility for my unwanted strays. Call local university.
OMG! I have used the ‘how many ways to skin a dead cat’ phrase without understanding for years. Now I know that not all cats can be skinned in the same way. It took me and my lab partner 3 days to remove the skin from our cat without damaging the underlying tissue. A group across the lab, just made a few cuts and the pelt slid right off (showoff bitches).
So we are in lab, and at each station is a cat, in a vaccume sealed bag with propylene glycol based preservative. Im thinking about the guy who works the warehouse where these cats are shipped from. Does he have a girlfriend, wife? Does he go to parties and tell people about shipping dead cats across the country? What would happen if the truck carrying the cats crashed on the highway and all the cats just spilled onto the roadway? What would it be like to be behind a accident like that and see all these vaccume sealed cats spread on the landscape? Did the driver think about what he was carrying? If the zombie apocalypse hit right at that moment would the cats be able to escape the packaging and maul the driver?
I was hoping a lab book could help me with these questions
You’re killing me. Trying to choke back my laughter in the office is giving me chest pains. I’m picturing cats strewn from hell to breakfast.
When we dissected fetal pigs they came packed in gel in a 5 gallon bucket. Earth worms came in a canister that looked a lot like stick pastries for coffee.
In a serious vein (tricky, since the rest of your post had me laughing so hard I think I pulled a muscle. Really.) what you noted has always been the crux of hands-on anatomic dissection: individual variation is huge.
Having dissected an absurd number of organisms in my career (up to and including Homo sapiens) it’s pretty much impossible to really understand how much variation occurs on multiple levels until you see it first hand.
Yes, you can tell students about variation. No, it’s not the same.