Wednesday, April 18, 2007
First Dissection

So far, I've been doing pretty well for my Bio of Animals I must say. Although I'm not sure I can say the same for the other 2 modules that I am taking.

At the last practical, I got to do my very first dissection. We had to dissect an earthworm to study its various organs and how they were placed within the body.

I was holding on to the earthworm in one hand, a pin in the other, and I just couldn't bring myself to put the pin through the head of the earthworm. It was the first time I was doing this and I didn't want it to go wrong. So I got help from a demonstrator who put the first 2 pins in for me and so the earthworm is then pinned to the waxed dish. Then it was time for the first incision. That, I felt, was the toughest part of the entire dissection process. Putting that first cut right through the earthworm was a bit daunting. It was not so much about having to cut the worm because it was already dead anyway, but it was more like I was afraid I would do something wrong. If I did cut it up wrongly, I would have to get myself another worm and do it again and I sure didn't want to waste another poor little worm. I hesitantly put the scalpel blade to the worm and gently put a cut across; nothing happened. I did it again, this time less gentle, and still I couldn't get a cut. I merely managed to create a depression on the worm. So I decided to not be gentle at all and just put a cut through it and voila! the skin opened up. After that first incision was done, everything else just came pretty naturally. I got my fine scissors and cut up the skin from the incision which is at about one-third of the worm, all the way up to the head. Then I pinned all the sides of the skin down and ta-da the organs of my earthworm all laid out nicely in my dish.

I have to say it was kinda pretty but I am also quite sure that a lot of you are not going to agree with me on this one. Anyway, I had all the organs intact, even the intestines and the dorsal blood vessel, which I felt was quite an achievement for my first dissection. The demonstrator said that I'm gonna be a brain surgeon in the future and I take that as a compliment. The organs were all so nicely placed that I didn't want to even touch them. So when the demonstrator came and started fiddling with it and moving the organs around, my heart sank. My beautifully intact intestine got squashed towards to end because I had to move it away to look for the other vessels on the ventral side. Poor worm.

It's really little things like that that have been convincing me I am on the right track and pushing me to go further. I am loving zoology! I just hope my other modules do not pull me down. I can't wait to go into full swing just concentrating on my major.

So here it is! My first dissection and the start to many more dissections.

WARNING: to those of you who have fear for worms especially my very Dear Friend (Jaz told me not to put her name up here to let everyone know she’s afraid of creepy crawlies), those who have just had a very big meal and to those who are complaining that the new stop smoking ad is giving them nightmares, please do not view following pics.