Introduction:
Dissections are performed on preserved animals donated specifically for science education in order to provide a hands-on experience to observe and study anatomy of an animal in three dimension, unlike a textbook, and how the organ systems are interconnected. In this particular dissection a fetal pig was used because the organs present in a pig, and their position in the body are similar to those of humans which provides insight on how human organs systems work overall and why they are essential to life. The purpose of our experiment was to focus on the external, digestive, cardiovascular, respiratory, and excretory systems of the fetal pig to understand how theses system work together in order to sustain life.
Materials & Procedure:
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The digestive system is responsible for chemically and mechanically breaking down food and includes organs such as, mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, rectum, anus, and additional accessory organs. These organs all aid in the breakdown of food. Food is broken down mechanically by chewing and churning in the stomach, and chemically by acidic enzymes in the stomach and in the small intestine which receives enzymes from the pancreas that are specifically designed for the breakdown of nutrients. Once the food and nutrients are broken down, the excretory system removes whatever the body decides is waste by filtering blood in the nephrons of the kidneys and turning it into urine which is then collected in the bladder and removed from the body when the bladder is …show more content…
Within the organs of the fetal pig, its colon is different in structure than that of human since the fetal pig colon is spiral. The fetal pig uterus has two big horns in addition to the body while the human uterus has small uterine horns. The large uterine horns on the fetal pig allow for a litter of 8 to 10 pigs. In fetal pigs, “the brachiocephalic artery splits into the right subclavian artery and the bicarotid trunk which then splits into the right and left common carotid arteries” (“Human/ Pig Comparisons”). Nonetheless, humans do not have a “bicarotid trunk and instead the left common carotid artery branches directly from the aorta” (“Human/ Pig Comparisons”). Fetal pigs also do not have iliac arteries that humans have. Additionally, because of the fact that pigs are quadrupedal and humans are bipedal there are small variations in the size and location of some muscles. Apart from these differences, the organs that are remotely the same in both pigs and humans include, stomach, spleen, bile duct system, small intestines, kidneys, bladder, pericardium, vena cava, esophagus, phrenic nerve, urethra, ovaries, labia, testes, epididymis, vas deferens,