First Dissection

Being a Biological science steam student, majoring in Biotechnology especially, there's no way I would escape from being a merciless killer. And what I meant by being a killer is performing dissecting on little animals.

I dissected a mouse for the first time in my life on the 4th of December 2007.

All opened up!

The mice were alive and were happily playing with each other. Little do they know that they'll be experimental materials and their lives wouldn't be spared. It's just like one minute they're alive the next minute, they're 'dead'. Not really dead but soon to be dead as they were put into deep slumber thanks to chloroform.

Sleep in peace dear mice.

To keep the entire dissecting procedure brief, I would say it wasn't that difficult to dissect and in fact, it was fun! Though what you inhale can be a little awful >_<

It smells of chicken liver you bought in wet market except 10 times worst.

The worst thing about dissecting a mouse or any other small animal is that they were actually alive before you remove their major organs. They were alive when you skin them. They were alive when you cut their thin membranes open and they were alive when you expose their internal organs. They were just unconscious and might wake up in the middle of the process. That explains why Ms. Tan's (the lecturer) mouse moved while she was half way dissecting. She was calm and cool about it but we, the students panicked and dump the entire lump of chloroformed cotton ball on the mouse's nose.

The chloroform effect wore off after about 15 mins.

Lucky me, I got a male mouse. I made a discovery that a mouse have one of the testes in their body and another of the pair out! Though not all mice have this strange habit. One of my classmate got a female mouse and there were embryos in it! 6 of them, to boot!

The embryos. We initially thought they were feces XD

It was a really pleasant and educational experience to dissect the mouse. Guess I should be thankful that my university chose mice over frogs because I can't imagine myself dissecting a frog. Most probably I'll keep repeating "Ewwww! Disgusting!!" every time I have contact with the slimy green gross amphibian.

I'm so sorry for taking your life.

Oh, did I mention I named the mouse I dissected Leon? That's because the little mouse I got have a big stomach just like Leon's and Guat Shan's mouse was Alex also because of the bigger stomach.