<p>The idea of my having to perform dissections on animals really freaks me out. As I plan to major in Biology in Carolina, I suppose some of the courses I take would require students to dissect. Is there any way one can opt out of these courses or opt not to take part in the actual dissections? Will this affect my grades? Are the professors supportive when it comes to making decisions of this sort?
Killing animals for classroom demonstrations seems to me to be so much of a waste and so inhumane. I would really appreciate any answers to my questions as this is a major concern for me. Thank you!</p>
<p>My boyfriend is a Biology major at UNC. He says that for most classes you can get out of dissection, BUT, in every lab your lowest grade is dropped. You most likely will have to take a 0 for the dissection, and that is the grade that will be dropped.
Usually there's about one dissection per Bio class, and some teachers have different policies, but that's what he's seen happen.</p>
<p>Maybe you could be a cellular biology or molecular biology major? or botony? I'm pretty sure you could avoid disection with those.</p>
<p>For plain biology, you have to take classes like physiology and comparative anatomy where disection is the base of the class. Its really the only way to learn to learn them. You could get out of it for Bio 11, but for more upper level classes you WILL have to disect.</p>
<p>Physiology you deshell a turtle and measure its heart beat while its still alive... (brain scrambled). In comparative vertebrate anatomy you disect cats, birds, snakes, sharks... this is at any school. Of course, in medical school you would be disecting humans, vet school tons of different animals.</p>
<p>Its not as bad as it seems... if you feel bad about the cats just know its the ones that they have to put to sleep at the pound, so they would be dead anyway.</p>
<p>I can understand where you're coming from. I really hate dissections, but I managed to get through the frog dissection my freshman year. Well, this year we had to dissect a fetal pig and a cat. The worst part was my cat was pregnant with kittens! My teacher suggested I do a virtual dissection online (I really, really advise you to try them) and then try the lab. I did manage to get through them; it wasn't too bad. Just try to get a lab partner that likes dissections! :eek:</p>
<p>I understand too. I've sorta gotten over this fear, but breaking a fetal pig's jaw was a bit hard for me- I had my partner do it. I hope I can handle the cat better this year.</p>
<p>Einman87 what do you want to do with your degree? If you want to go to med/dental/vet school you should probably just get used to disecting things now... its seriously not that bad. if you want to do research you should probably get used to killing animals for knowledge, i think its pretty much unavoidable</p>
<p>warblersrule86 where are these virtual disections online? Are they good for anatomy classes? I have a test on the cat and shark circulatory system in a week, and if I could study for it outside of the lab it'd help a lot!</p>
<p>I couldn't find the exact cat dissection I used, but here's an ok [one[/url</a>] I just found. </p>
<p>Here's the excellent [url=<a href="http://www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html%5Dfrog">http://www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html]frog</a> dissection](<a href="http://library.thinkquest.org/15401/learn.html%5Done%5B/url">http://library.thinkquest.org/15401/learn.html) I used (see "demos"-they're free).</p>
<p>Here's the pig</a> dissection I used.</p>
<p>Here's a shark</a> dissection I just found.</p>
<p>Try doing searches- that's how I found the ones I used. :)</p>
<p>Here's some [url=<a href="http://www.gen.umn.edu/courses/1137/studyaids.htm%5Dlinks%5B/url">http://www.gen.umn.edu/courses/1137/studyaids.htm]links[/url</a>] to various virtual dissections.</p>
<p>wait a minute, are you serious. You want to be an biology major??</p>
<p>alright, don't expect to do a lot of dissecting here at carolina, you really don't do any(depending on the path in biology you choose to take). Even anatomy and physiology is just a lecture with no lab. However, you dissect a fetal pig in Biol 11L (intro bio lab). I'd like to note that these pigs are only biproducts of hog slaughter houses (if your from eastern NC then you should be familiar with this) and they were not purposly killed for you to dissect. The pig parts are a big thing on the lab final exam and there is a pig part quiz. If your too scared to touch or get near the pig then your lab partner (or partners) can do it for you. I had 2 partners, and 1 of them didn't want to touch the pig and she didn't have too, she just watched and we showed her the parts.</p>