Kitchen Biology

This past year Moo took three high school credits as an 8th grader.  Yup, you can do that.  One of them was Biology, and the big end-of-year celebration was the thing that most biology students dread.  Dissections.

Look at Moo's face. That is her look of rapture (not) over the thought of the impending Biology activity. Belle, on the other hand, was looking forward to the whole thing.  In fact, she was a bit put out that she couldn't play a larger role.

First: cow eyeball dissection.  Again, Moo looks thrilled.  By the way, if you see a one-eyed cow out there in the field, let him know that we are very thankful for his contribution to our biology class.

Resistance is futile.

The coolest part about this was seeing the mother-of-pearl-like lustrous interior of the eye.

Sidenote: Belle watched all dissection activities while eating tuna casserole. She is either sick and twisted, or headed for a career in medicine.  I don't know which I fear more...

Time for something, um, different...

The first time in almost 10 (?) years that pork of any kind has been in our house.  On our table.  Ready to be sliced into.  Eww.  In all seriousness, Moo and I had a little bit of a cry (she started it!) over how little and innocent this little guy was, and how bad we felt for its fate.  Then, we gave thanks and got started.

And man!  It was super cool.  These little creatures have a physiological make-up very similar to the human animal, so taking a look inside is very enlightening.  Note: I only dissected a frog in my biology class way-back-when...so there were TWO students at the table.

The labs that send out these dissection kits double-inject the critters with red and blue latex, so that you can see the arteries and veins throughout the body.  It makes it really easy to identify what structures are carrying oxygen rich blood, and which are carrying oxygen poor blood.  Neat.

NOTES: This is the first (and last) blog post with graphic content of any kind.  LOL  Also, we quadruple scrubbed the kitchen table.  :)