Dissecting Squid

Its always nice to start of your almost non-stop ten hour day with a squid dissection at 9am on a Monday morning.

 The same as previous dissections, I drew the external anatomy before i started the dissection. I drew it laterally as it gave a better view of the head and tentacles.There was only enough time for one diagram I thought this was the best.

(above: diagram of the external anatomy of the squid. I took it before id finished my sentence at the bottom, whoops!)

Then we dissected the squid (this dissection was done in pairs). First we had to work out if we had a male or female. There are not ovary's which is the obvious sign. Ours had a penis and a spermatophore sac which has a different texture to what's around it for example the digestive caecum. 

(above: the dissection of the squid.)

After we had decided which gender it was, we then got to locating where certain things were: ink sac, heart, vena cava, rectum etc. We filled it with water so that we could see things better and found the heart (with a little help as its small and hard to spot). With all things located I then drew the internal anatomy of the squid.

(above: Internal anatomy of the squid. I did correct the spelling on this after I took it.)

We then had to do the rest of the write up, explaining functions of some of its anatomy (eg. fins/ink sac). 

This was one of the smellier ones,  even though I was wearing gloves, I still had to wash my hands a good few times to get the squid smell out.

Dissecting Lug Worms

This ones a bit late, a fortnight ago my dissection for Diversity of Life 2 was lug worms. lug worms feed on Plankton and Detritus from water that is washed into their burrows. They live in the sand in coastal areas.

I drew its external anatomy before the dissection. I got marked on the actual presentation of my dissection of which I did well. 

Once I finished the dissection I drew the internal anatomy. After the dissection I looked at the differences between earthworms and lug worm (this was mainly based on the external anatomy). I then had a live earthworm and had to describe the way in which the worm moves. 

the latter part of this was harder than imagined.

Crayfish Dissection

One of my first practical’s for my module 'Diversity of Life 2' was to dissect crayfish. This module covers the diversity of the invertebrates. Half of the module is arthropods and the other half is on everything else...

In college I had dissected a fair few of the basic things like pigs hearts, lungs, frogs, rats and even an octopus but nothing to the skill in which I would need for my degree. It was fairly straight forward, and it was very interesting. I learnt that putting it underwater after the initial dissection enabled me to see things more clearly for example its gills. 

I also had to do a two detailed scientific diagrams; one of the external dorsal view of the crayfish and another of the ventral internal anatomy.

A very interesting start to my degree.