Frog Dissection

On Tuesday and Wednesday we had the unique opportunity to dissect frogs in our class lab groups, and boy, what an experience it was! After making sure we understood the instructions, we jumped right in! The first day we didn't do much, except for cutting through the skin and muscle on the ventral side. Once we did, it opened a door to reveal all of the organs, and of course-tons of preservatives! On a side note~the frogs didn't smell half as bad as I thought they would. Not that they didn't smell bad at all, because believe me, they did, but the stench was still bearable, a definite plus. Once we cut through, this is what our frog (which we named Crystal) looked like (see picture one). To prepare for the next day, we took out Crystal's eggs (because she was female). They were very small, black, and round. There were way more eggs than I thought there would be! There must have been hundreds of them all sitting there, spread across the entire frog!  The fat bodies really did look like spaghetti, just like our packet said.                               

:

Our frog after cutting through the skin and muscle

Fat bodies

          


















On the second day we discussed all of the organs on the packet we got and described their functions. As we watched Mrs. Rousseau dissect the frog, I was able to clearly see each organ and where it was located (Thanks Mrs. Rousseau-you're the best!). When it was our turn to dissect, my group first thought that the liver was the lungs, and we were surprised to find out that it was not. Who would have known that the liver was the largest organ in the frog's body? Once we pinned the skin to the side the organs looked like this: 

It was fun looking at each organ and being able to identify it. The frogs have similar organs to humans, so I found it interesting to compare. For example, even though frogs and humans both have a gall bladder, the frog's looks like a giant green booger (there is really no other way to describe it). Labeling the organs in a diagram on paper further enhanced our knowledge of their placement. Overall, dissecting a frog allowed us to compare ourselves with frogs and determine the different life systems in a frog (And we got to have a blast while doing it! Thanks Crystal!) 


While writing this I came across websites that added to my understanding, or gave me a chance to do a virtual dissection, so I decided to share:
http://www.hoala.org/marine%20biology/frog%20dissection.html  
http://frog.edschool.virginia.edu/Frog2/home.html
http://froggy.lbl.gov/cgi-bin/dissect?engl


Or if you are daring enough, take the quiz:
http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/bl1qfrog.htm