Today we started with the vertebrates and looked at trout as a representative of the bony fishes.

I was not at all looking forward to this session this past week... We had to dissect a fish. For some people that might not seem so bad, but for me personally it was horrible.

The trout we used were from a breeding facility and were intended for food. They were killed by the breeder on the same day with an electrical shock and came to us fresh for dissecting.

I was lucky again and my partner took over the dissection. I would never have been able to do it myself... But even watching was hard for me. All of the organs were pretty easy to recognize because the trout was big, but it was still very bloody and disgusting.

Especially when we were supposed to take out the heart, the blood just flowed out. It also wasn’t a pretty sight when we took out the brain at the end. First we had to separate the head from the body and then cut open the skull...

Once again I think a model and pictures would have been sufficient. Or at least just one fish dissected by the professor. I just don’t understand why we have to dissect so many animals and afterwards just throw them away like they were objects and not living beings like us.

Especially since the students don’t always dissect cleanly and precisely and in the end can’t recognize anything because they damaged an organ. That means a lot of animals die for nothing.

I’m already worried about the next sessions, when we’ll dissect frogs, one-day-old chicks, and mice. I’d really prefer to drop this course...

Adeline, 1st semester, Biology