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| Hillsdale students get up-close biology lesson |
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| Education | |||
| Written by Jesse Trimble | |||
| Wednesday, 25 November 2009 08:00 | |||
Third-graders were a little squeamish last week in Kim Weber’s science class.  Aaron Stohs, veterinarian from the Drexel Veterinary Clinic in Drexel, Mo., visited the students to perform a pig dissection on Nov. 17 at Hillsdale Elementary. Weber’s class is currently studying the different systems in the human body and has had Stohs visit her class over the past four to five years. Stohs answered questions from concerned students before beginning the dissection. He informed the class that the pigs being used were stillborn and weren’t going to be alive when they were born, so their bodies were saved to be used for science. Students were also worried about the pigs stinking. “Nope, hardly any smell to them at all, because they were stillborns their intestines are sterile,” Stohs said. He added that because they’d never eaten anything, enzymes in the digestive tract weren’t used that are associated with a foul smell. One worried student asked if the blood had been pumped out of the bodies, which was not the case. Weber said the kids had been studying everything from the digestive tract to the inner workings of the human heart. As Stohs made the first cut, some brave third-graders stepped in closer for a better look. The veterinarian went through the different systems in the pig, pulling out the heart and tracing the direction of the respiratory system, down to the small and large intestines. He explained that the heart is a muscle in the pig’s body, just as it is for humans and pumps the blood to the rest of the body. “How big would a cow’s heart be?” a student asked. “A cow’s heart may be the size of your head,” Stohs answered, with a few chuckles from the class. Next, the tongue was removed, the diaphragm was opened up, and the kids peered in closer. As Stohs pointed to the stomach, liver and kidneys he asked the kids to identify the organ and explain what it does. Next on the agenda was not leaving anything off the list that the third-graders wanted to see. Stohs pointed out a joint, and at the request of a few brave students, cut out an eye for them to see. Last was the brain, which generated many “oohs and ahhs” from the science class. There were the occasional, “poor pig” comments, too. As the dissection closed, the majority of the class gleefully put on gloves to touch a few organs on the table and were then properly instructed how to remove them without coming into contact with blood.
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