DISSECTING A RAT
In this blog I will be teaching you about my first dissection.
This dissection was to see and learn about the organ system. The organ system is a group of different types of tissues to form organs, with a group organs you get an organ system, which then makes a body. The organ system’s purpose is to work together for one common goal.
I think the purpose of this dissection was to get a basic understanding of what we are learning and to be confident in dissecting since we will be dissecting more animals as the time comes. For example, at first I wasn't fine at all with dissecting an animal because I felt bad for it. But as time went on I got more comfortable with it. To the point I didn't feel scared or bad that I was cutting through a dead rat. |
Here are the lymph glands, their purpose is to identify and fight infections. They are like filters to stop junk from going to your body. If we didn't have these glands we would always be sick and die faster because we wouldn't have anything to fight infections and send messages to our body saying there's an infection.
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Here are the Salivary glands 2 main functions are that they produce saliva and help breakdown carbohydrates. They also help the digestive system by keeping the food moist as it travels thoughout the body.
I don't know why but as I was writing this i had a random thought. that thought was we think this is totally normal but if other animals were able to understand it they would think its so weird. Like we have something that spits out with a gooey texture to moisten our food. |
Here we have the urinary bladder (stores urine), the penis(besides its reproductive functions it also acts as a conduit for urine), the urethra(the tube that carries the urine from the bladder), the testes(they produce sperm and secrete hormones) and the scrotal( the loose skin that around the testes, which also acts like a climate control).
without these things are bladders would explode of being too full, or we would be extincted since we wouldn't be able to reproduce. Or the way we reproduce would be a complete different way, that our bodies would evolve so we can be able to. |
unfortunately no one in my class got a female rat but I still thought it was important to mention it
Here we have the heart, Thymus glads, diaphragm, lungs, and liver. the purpose of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body, with oxygen and nutrients. The thymus glads produce a special types of cells like the white blood cells, it also helps fight against deadly pathogens. The diaphragm separates the thoracic region and the abdominal region. It helps you create a vacuum in your body so when you breathe out it relaxes causing the air in your lungs to be released. The lungs as we all know it help us breathe. Their main part in our body is the gas exchange where they inhale oxygen and release carbon dioxide.
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Here we have the small intestines connected to the mesentery. the small intestine is where the majority of the nutrients in the food is absorbed that why it has those little web like pipes on it. the mesentery is the web like pipe looking thing, it connects from the small intestines to other parts of the body to distribute the nutrients.
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Here is the cecum and the large intestine. Cecum's function is absorb fluids and salts, and to mix the contents with lubrication mucus. The large intestine functions are to recover water and electrolytes, to form faeces and to ferment indigestible foods.
I know this is weird but how does your body dehydrate when you have diarrhea like since the large intestine is where it gets most of its water, what happens in those cases? |
Here we have the Kidney its main function is to have a fluid balance, and to filter minerals from the blood.
So in the case of an alcoholic what happens to your kidneys? What does the alcohol do to your kidneys? We also have the spleen, which is another type of filter for the the body. In the spleen we recycle old red blood cells and store white blood cells. I find it interesting how we naturally recycle things like we as humans don't automatically recycle plastic and stuff like that but our bodies do, they automatically recycle blood cells so we can use later when we need them. *side note* Something I found very interesting was the kidney really did look like a red kidney bean and that a rats kidney is probably the same size as an actual kidney bean. |
Photo used under Creative Commons from Edsel L