Question on Disecting Cats

[trayi52]

The eigth graders here were disecting baby pigs.

Twisterdog what you said reminded me of that commercial I seen on TV, where they give everybody their frogs to disect and this one guy EATS his and asks for another!!!! Ewwwwee!!! Yuck!

[GoldenRetrLuver]

We have to do this too. Last year, we disected a Cow Eyeball, and a squid. This year, my Biology teacher said we're going to disect a pig fetus, and a cat. I agree with Twisterdog, if it's dead there's no harm done. But, if it was alive I consider that CRUEL. Since I'm aiming to become a vet, I think this could be good "practice". I don't get squimish around blood or anything, so I should be fine.

[RICHARD]

Originally posted by Twisterdog
I learned NOTHING from the experience, because it upset me and grossed me out completely. I was too tortured to learn. It did me absolutely no good to kill that frog. However, I was an accounting major in college, not pre-vet. There IS value to dissection, for pre-vet or pre-med students. Just not your average high school kid.

One of the wonders of life is how so many small cells can be put together and make a creature that walked the planet.

This sounds totally stupid but I think that studying the body of an animal and making us understand how and why the animal 'ticks'
honors the creature.

it makes more sense to give a person, with a true desire to make a difference in the future, the chance to understand how that animal is put together...

One day you will hand your pet over to a vet and they, by knowing how and why your animal is put together, will be able to
care for it in a humane and caring way.

American Indians always honored the animals they killed for food by stopping and thanking the gods for bringing them onto the planet.

Unfortunately these animal are killed because we choose not to protect them from a fate that puts them on a tray in an anatomy class........

By dishonoring them and using them as fertilizer or putting then in an incinerator we waste an opportunity to learn from their short and painful lives.

It's far more offensive to me NOT to learn from our mistakes than to rail about the aftermath and our inability to make things right in the first place.

Take a look around at the things that you take for granted and
pay attention to how those things came about.

Trust me-

you may as well stop living.

But what do I know?

[ramanth]

Our biology class in HS dissected cats. You didn't have to if you didn't want too, you could do a paper instead, but most of the class did it.

My group consited of me and two guy friends and we were all cat owners. After being reassured that the cats were euthanized from the shelter, we did it and I felt it helped me learn how my cats tick.

[ILoveMyAbbyGirl]

Everyones making it sound better than I'm thinking it is, but I don't think I could. I'd watch maybe, but I don't know if I could do it myself. *is a sap* I'd be too sad...

[Soledad]

Wow, Richard. You said exactly what I felt about this issue.

[cali]

thank goodness nothing is forced here, if you dont want to disect an animal for any reason you dont have to, you have to be there and watch, but you can watch from the back, without doing any disecting yourself and you will not be penilized for it. thank heavens we do not disect much at my school, I am in bio 20, and we are doing no disecting this year. last year however I had to disect a pigs heart and lungs. but by then I was so used to handling and cutting organs with bare hands(dog food) that doing it with gloves on was not bad at all. I wont disect anything more then organs though, I cannot disect an animal like a cat, no way. I dont have a problem with organ meats(they are ordered from a meat packing plant) just because whenever my mom is sick or out of town I have to feed my dogs, and they eat organ meat, and we dont use gloves for that.

[2kitties]

You know Richard, you come in here everyday and you drop your sarcastic little funnies that are usually laced with either truth, irony or sarcasm. You always make us laugh.


...Then you come in here with posts like this that are bold, truthful, well spoken, educated, indisputable and ...well, perfect.

Well said, my friend.

[lizbud]

Originally posted by RICHARD


This sounds totally stupid but I think that studying the body of an animal and making us understand how and why the animal 'ticks'
honors the creature.



American Indians always honored the animals they killed for food by stopping and thanking the gods for bringing them onto the planet.

I don't think it's stupid Richard, but grade school & high school
students can better learn to "honor the creatures" by learning
about the nature of living animals instead of cutting up the dead
bodies. Save the investigative studies for serious Vet students
of college age who could become animal healers.

Also (my paternal grandfather was Shawnee), American Indians
prayed to the Spirit of the animal killed for food. They believed all
life was One & part of the Great Spirit/God. All life (plant & Animal) is part of God & deserves great reverence.

[Soledad]

But! Some highschoolers & junior highschoolers would never know how interesting biology is if they hadn't dissected. It can really spark a desire and interest in biology/anatomy that might not have been there before!

[Cincy'sMom]

Originally posted by Soledad
Wow, Richard. You said exactly what I felt about this issue.

Now we know why it is so cold!!! Soledad and Richard are argeeing!!!!

[Soledad]

Hardy har har.

[Cincy'sMom]

[andrea_NMAggie]

I took an anatomy/physiology class as a senior in high school, and we learned on a cat. It was such an experience. Not everyone in our class was thinking of going into medicine as a career, I think the reason we enrolled in this class was because we were eager to learn about how a body works. I've always been an animal lover, but knowing that these cats weren't "killed" just for us to learn on made it easier to distance myself emotionally. I can't remember what we named our cat...but we worked on it for an entire semester. I aced the class, learned a lot...retained the information that I learned from that class until 2 years later when I took the anatomy class in College.

[RubyMutt]

I took biology my sophomore year of high school (we dissected frogs), but one day my teacher wanted to bring our class over to the senior anatomy class to observe them dissecting cats. All I can remember was that very few of the students seemed to be taking it seriously. A few of them were DANCING with the dead cats. It was so disgusting, immature, and disrespectful. The teacher didn't seem to have much control of that class I never took anatomy, partially for that reason, but I already had enough science credits anyway. I have a couple friends who are going to college for biology majors. They just dissected pigs a couple semesters ago.

I don't think I gained much from my frog dissection (my lab partner did most of the 'hands on' work... I really did not like poking around inside a dead animal). I don't think dissection is should be necessary for just basic high school science classes, I can understand the use of them for anatomy students. It's nice if the cats really do come from a shelter instead of just killing them specifically for science. I remember my biology teacher having a HUGE catalog of different 'specimens' you could order. I was amazed at some of the stuff you could buy