Saturday, March 1, 2008

more dissections, dissections, dissections!!!!
i am an animal lover who loves cutting up animals!

i cut up a sea urchin this time. the past year, when i did dissections, i was provided with dead animals. this time, i had to kill it myself. thank goodness it was a sea urchin. at least i do not have facial expressions and struggles to deal with. we soaked it in warm freshwater to kill it. it's spines were moving about quite a bit and then they stop. wa-la! dead sea urchin ready to be dissected. =)

my sea urchin had really nice-looking gonads which i think is what they harvest and put on sushi. yes yes... there i go again looking at my specimen and thinking about food. i am horrible but yum yum. my specimen was full of shit... literally. they are supposed to be called faecal pellets but what the heck... it's shit. well at least i know my sea urchin died matured and full with a good meal of seaweeds. my urchin died happy (or so i'd like to believe).

i love the aritotle's lantern and it's functions. in simple terms, it's the feeding instrument of sea urchins. very cool. go google it up. anyway, after my dissection, i removed the aritotle's lantern of my urchin and brought it home. unfortunately, it kinda got broken into parts while i was cleaning it. i'm still keeping it though.

i'm going to be cutting up cuttlefish!!! one of my favourite animals!!! but that'll only happen at the end of the semester. till then, i have other things awaiting to be cut up.

oh this is why i love zoology!