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I just learned that we will be dissecting a RAT next week. Um yuck. Cat? sure! pig? sure! cadaver? sure! A RAT? no way. I think I'll sit this one out.
What did you dissect?
would you dissect a rat?
We had a fetal pig! We also did the kidneys & the heart. I loved it! My instructor called me the class surgeon. Lol. I cleaned out my kidney to see the renal pyramids and it was SO cool!! We also had a huge ureter on ours. Totally awesome! My heart was cool too but I didn't get any pics of it and everyone else was afraid o touching it.
Lol In a way, rats were a major factor in the Black Death. Fleas were the issue, but it was the infected woodland rats that carried the fleas into the cities, allowing these fleas to then proceed into city rats and into every domestic beast and humans. These rats you dissect are harmless, as they are born and raised in a lab setting. So in a way, they are the "sanitary rats". :)
My physiology professor is a spinal chord researcher and they use rats in her lab. They can make them walk upright and they do different experiments on them that require severing their spinal cords. There was also a video she showed us where they cut out the gastrocnemius of a live rat to study muscle contraction.
She said the lab used cats before but enough animal rights people complained that they had to use rats instead.
Stephalump
2,723 Posts
Weren't rats a major vector for the the Black Death?
I think I'd Lysol that sucker down before digging in.