Exploring the Fetal Pig Dissection

After all of our hard work as Team AP Bio, we were rewarded with the opportunity to explore mammalian body systems on our own with our fetal pig dissection!

The first day of the dissection, I was VERY intimidated by the fact that the pig was real. As someone who works in veterinary medicine, I had so much sympathy for the animal and did not want to make any incisions to its body. However, as you can see in these pictures, by the second day I was fascinated by the pig's bodily functions.

One thing that made me curious was when one of my teammates asked my teacher about the pigs' brains. Initially I had no intention of actually dissecting the brain, until my teacher mentioned that a few of her previous students had done it successfully. Hearing this, I went back to my table and cut an opening in the head, careful not to pierce through to the brain. I had originally just cut out of curiosity of seeing the brain, but then decided to remove it, which I did shortly after.

After the pig dissection, I have learned how to locate many parts of the body and name their functions. For example, I had always known what the job of the liver is, but I had no idea how large it would be in comparison to the rest of the body. I also learned that the diaphragm is a thin muscle that acts as a barrier between the respiratory cavity and digestive cavity.

Dissecting the fetal pig helped me learn more about our bodies as humans, and why we need to take precautions such as wearing helmets and seatbelts. I also learned more about where each internal organ is located, which will be good background knowledge for college, where I will be majoring in biology on the pre-med track. Overall, I am grateful for the experience we had and will always remember the dissection!