A Wannabe Zoologist’s Thoughts on Dissection
If we can do things humanely, why don’t we?
Dissection and zoology often go hand in hand. To study the makeup of animals, the way their diet and habitat affect them, their causes of death, dissection must sometimes be used. Sometimes, animals can provide us with the most information about them postmortem. All my life, I knew I wanted to work with animals. But as soon as I knew that at some point, I’d have to dissect a frog , I protested. As a child, I angrily announced that I would never, ever do something like that — it was gross, and it was wrong. And when I was doing college credit classes in high school, faced with a dead frog and a scalpel during finals, I tried the same argument. Surprise — it didn’t work. I was faced with a dilemma: Dissect the frog, or refuse and take a 0 on the assignment — a heavily weighted assignment I couldn’t afford to lose. The choice was unfortunately clear. I’ll admit I cried when I did it. I was only queasy until I discovered she was a female, swollen with unlaid eggs — then I felt like a monster. I tried to reassure myself, that it wasn’t my fault, that I hadn’t killed her — but it just didn’t feel like enough. And further research into the company supplying the frogs for our class dissection left me horrified. The frogs weren’t captive bred for this purpose — they were wild caught (despite being a…
