There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
This is just a saying, but the BV West
science department is taking it literally.
In the past few weeks, students in the Anatomy& Physiology class have been dissecting cats. Jennifer Legrotte’s class is currently doing the dissections, but Greg Schell’s class will start in late April.
The dissection is a complicated process and usually takes about three weeks to
complete. First, the cat’s skin is removed, which can take several days. Then, students
explore its muscular system and each of the organs in turn, continuing inward until they
reach the skeleton.
Teachers get their cats from biological supply companies, which usually prepare
strays or shelter cats for dissection. Animals are ordered from a catalogue in sets of 15 or
20 at a time. They are preserved with formalin (formaldehyde) or a similar fixative, and
often have their blood replaced with different-colored latex so students can tell veins
from arteries. Some companies sell cats that are already skinned, but BV West usually
buys specimens that are still intact.
“These are alley cats that get rounded up and don’t belong to anybody,” Schell
said. “At least we’re able to use them for something educational.”
Cat dissections can be good preparation for medical school and a career in
healthcare. It’s one thing to read about anatomy in a textbooks, but quite another to pick
up a scalpel and see it firsthand. Students in medical school routinely dissect human
bodies and perform surgery on cadavers. High school dissections desensitize students to
the sight of internal organs, while teaching them about important structures in the body.
“It’s a learning experience,” senior Anna Scopp said. “If you go to medical
school, you have to be ready to do that kind of thing.”
Cats are good animals to use because they’re small enough to be stored in a
classroom and are actually very similar to humans in their anatomy. Cats and people have
the same basic skeletal structure, though the size and shape of the bones are different.
The organs are similar in appearance and function, and most of them look like miniature
versions of human anatomy.
“What students are able to see [inside a cat] is similar to what it would look like
inside of them,” Schell said. “Many of the structures are the same.” The majority of students in the Anatomy and Physiology classes either enjoy the
dissection or eventually warm up to it.
“I was pretty grossed out, but then I got used to it,” senior and past anatomy
student Ubby Kalifa said. Of course, some BV West students are opposed to the idea of cutting up
something that looks like their family pet.
“I don’t really support dissection in general,” sophomore David Mann said. “Why
should we have to cut open cats when we already know what they look like inside?”
Cat dissection may be seen as cruel, disgusting, exciting, or educational,
depending on who is asked. But since there is no alternative at the moment, it is here to stay.