Disecting cats in Biology class.

[sammy101]

IMO, if the cats were PTS humanely or died of natural causes I see nothing wrong with it. I don't think that's right for high school though. I think college/university is more fit for something like this.

I dissected a rat in 10th grade. I was ok with it then but I don't know about now.

[lizbud]

My high school required Biology classes. I loved the science of it, but
the lab excerise was awful. I quickly found a good lab partner who did
all the cutting while I took notes. We only had to do worms & frogs.

[king2005]

When I did Bio our teacher told us where the animals came from. He is an animal lover & only gets them from a trusted source. The pigs came from adult pigs that went to slaughtor & ended up being pregnant. So the baby pigs were sold to the company. The frogs came from research labs, same with the rats. The cats came from the same company who got them from different animal shelters. They were cats that were destroyed & instead of going to the landfill to rot.

No the shelters were not getting $ for this. The cats were all donated in order to prevent any issues.. BUT the schools bought the cats from the company.

There was info on the company if we wanted to read more up on it to insure the school wasn't buying animals to be killed for class, etc...

I quite injoyed the class & so did everyone else.

[Fett]

In high school, I remember using the frogs and earthworms and fetal pigs. In middle school we did adult pig's hearts because they are the closest thing to human hearts.

[joanofark]

I'm currently in high school, and the AP Bio classes actually dissected cats before school let out last year. The science wing had a pretty raunchy smell for a couple days.

However, any student is free to opt out and do the same thing on the the computer program. About 1/4 of ever class did so.

[wolflady]

Even though I loved my biology classes, I don't think I could have dissected a cat. It was hard enough doing the frog and the worm!

[RICHARD]

If you go back in time and look at the Da Vinci sketches of the human anatomy there is a very visceral and at the same time beautiful look of them.

I dissected a cat in Anatomy and was not thrilled about it. The teacher explained to us that it was not a mandatory 'hands on' part of the class but she expected people to watch.

She also told us to name our cats and to treat them with dignity and respect, for they were there to teach us and if we looked at them with that kind of honor, we would be able to get thru that part of the course.

Our cat was named Bubbles and to this day, when I see the innards of animal or human, I flip back to that cat and appreciate how and what I was able to to take away from those classes and I can really say that it helped me really
honor and respect a very tough and challenging part of my education.

Had those animals just been killed and dumped or cremated I would have never been able to have come away with the knowledge I have of the human body, muscles and the skeletal structures.

The Amerinds had/have a wonderful ideal when it comes to animals they killed for food and fur.

They would only take the animals they needed and prayed over the bodies and honored their lives, deaths and what they left behind.

I think we can all learn from that ideal.