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Save the Sea Kittens!!!!


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Ok Pack, you got me there. Raw liver just doesn't do it for me. I guess I do have my limits!

 

Although I do like sushi & sashimi. I mean, strips of raw sea kitten rolled in rice and chopped into bit-sized pieces.

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Well....I was thinking more along the lines of Sweeney Todd, heh, heh.

Back in the old days I had to instruct hundreds of students in how to pith a frog for dissections. If you're not familiar with this, the live, strugglng animal is held in one hand. Using a couple of fingers, the head is bent down and with the other hand you insert a dissecting needle between the vertebrae and down into the spinal cord. Wiggling it around a few times scrambles the spinal cord so the frog is alive but paralyzed. This allows the most desirable conditions for the subsequent dissection: literally slicing it apart in very small pieces while it is still alive. Needless to say, this is rarely done anymore.

Invertebrates don't fare any better but according to some profoundly stupid people, invertebrates must not be capable of sensing pain. Go figure.

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Good thing Pack was talking about fish and not cats or dogs - then we'd be worrying about having another Jeffrey Dahmer on our hands.

 

The only creature I ever dissected while it was still living was a sea urchin in my Marine Biology class - and the only reason was because the internal organs collapse pretty much as soon as it dies. The hardest part was trying to get a dissecting scalpel through a mass of wriggling spines to a plate border, all while trying to hold onto a ball or wriggling spines without getting stabbed. Of course, the distinct possibility of being stabbed by the sea urchin spines during the process certainly seemed to even out the score somewhat - though man being man, we were ultimately bound to come out the winner.

 

I, however, did not take any pleasure in this and was glad when that lab was over, and never to be repeated.

 

Now a dead creature - I've got no qualms about that at all - ask me about Gross Anatomy sometime.

 

Calico

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Pack,

Sooooo, do you have a trap door in the living room floor just in front of the Lazy Boy recliner? I'll have to remember to submit the cost of the lobstahs for dinner. Oops, I mean experiments. Is your buddy still at the university? Maybe I'll stop in next September for a seafood dinner on my way to see Gonzo, and then to HHI. Then again, if you have a Vet Med program, you could always put in a proposal for an experiment involving woking the dog or cat, and see how far it gets before they realize it's not a typo.

 

Yep, sure do remember the frogs, cats, dogs, along with some other assorted parts back in the 70's for A&P, and for some of the clinical labs. Gives you a real love for your pets, and sympathy for the unfortunate anesthetized pound pups and kits we used, so we could learn how to save lives. Every once and awhile I come across my old dissection kit in the drawer, and start eyeing the four frolicking felines running around our house. (JUST KIDDING!!)

 

I wonder if the PETA people have DNR tattooed on their chest. I'm sure they wouldn't want us working on them if they knew what we did to their furry critters. That's one way to weed them out of the gene pool.

 

Speaking of 7 degrees of separation. SWMBO went to school with Dahmer's first. Then again, living in NE Ohio, it's not hard to find a tie to some nationally known infamous loony. Damned Seasonal Affective Disorder.

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See? Now this is the way to have some innocent fun in the forum on politics!

Callico,

Wow, I had almost forgotten about the sea urchins. Awesome! Here's something else I remembered about that: inject the males with KCl and they release mass quantities of sperm on their way out, it's a fatal manipulation (I've often wondered it something similar would happen if applied to humans). The thing I remember is that the urchin sperm remind me of low-cal mayonnaise. Now THAT's a nice association to hold in one's mind, LOL.

 

But I've never had any question about why they call it 'gross' anatomy. By the way, that professor retired about 5 years ago. He is still active but not teaching physiology. His experimental work was on hibernation in rodents and I spent many hours watching him saw open their skulls to insert electrodes. It was almost comical watching those animals stumbling about in their brief caged lives, getting tangled in wires coming out of their heads. But, ahem, we didn't eat THOSE.

ASM915, I think Gonzo moved, didn't he? But stop by anytime, we'll chum up some kind of charred wildlife flesh. And you can set your mind at ease, no trap doors at my place. But a local barber with a great sense of humor has Sweeney Todd posters on his walls. My dentist has practically memorized Little Shop of Horrors. It's the simple things in life that give such pleasure.;)

There's a local tech school that has a Vet Tech program. I've never dissected a dog but I've worked on cats and pigs in lab, probably should stop the list there. H'mmm, those skills might come in handy if someday we decide to work for the CIA.....

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OK... you guys are scary.... (backing away slowly from the camp fire)

 

Since we're talking dissections though - my son was given links to some virtual dissection sites for frogs, in prep for his biology class next week. I'm curious if these are realistic, or if any studies have been done on student learning outcomes? I know the "feel" of things is different, but I wonder how well these virtual sites do in terms of presenting the basic anatomy? (I remember dissecting a bunch of things in bio class, but that was a long time ago) Here's an example: http://frog.edschool.virginia.edu/Frog2/home.html

 

As an even further aside - I wonder how many frogs get dissected in the name of high school science each year?

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Pack,

Gonzo temporarily moved to St Louis last winter, but he's back in Gainesville again. At least I won't have to take the long route to HHI next September.

 

As for some of my former A&P pets, they were anesthtized, but alive, to practice procedures. I guess that was a little more humane then the gas chambers.

 

Lisa, BOO!!!

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I can not tell you how my faith in mankind was completely ruined when I saw my first human cadaver, and it did not have red arteries, blue veins, and yellow nerves (latex paint I suppose) like the specimens in HS biology. Thought I was looking at really dry bar-be-que. ;)

 

Doesn't PETA know that in some countries, eating the kittens is perfectly OK?

 

What do they call crustaceans?

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Many of us disagree with the PETA approach and I know that some of them are disgusted with those who do eat tasty animals. But speaking of eating 'real' kittens, I thought I'd share this piece of trivia from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=5223077&m=5223078

You can also google 'ortolan' and 'eating' to learn what the interview is all about in more detail. I've seen this and it is fascinating to see a man lift his white linen napkin, tucked into his neck, up and over the top of his head...and then a spatter of blood appears on the napkin when he crunches the skull. I've eaten live shrimp whole, and small fish (doing my best Gollum impression)but I think eating ortolan is 'for the birds', LOL.

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A local delicacy is Cashew chicken (deep fried (Chicken?)nuggets with oyster sauce, green onions or shallots and cashews usually served with shrimp fried rice and an egg roll) - due to some unfortunate drawls and hillbilly-ness one phonetically orders "Cat-chew chicken" (to make it sound authentic, ham it up as much as possible) in order to receive this dish.

 

The phonetics of ordering and the perceived low cat populations in the areas around establishments serving this delicacy leads to perceptions by some that it may actually BE Cat chew chicken. :)

 

Also,

The Scout in the family required a trip to obtain a few Sea-kittens for dinner once I informed him of this story and thread, mmmm delicious.

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