Mouse Dissection (Graphic Picture)
Seriously. People have complained in the past that they ignored this picture and were confronted with a dissected animal. If you can't stomach looking at the internal organs of a mouse, maybe this post isn't for you.
Mice, one of the most common animals used for animal experiments. There are strict guidelines about how to treat them and those who work with them need specific certificates to be allowed to kill them.
But if the mouse is already dead, different rules apply. Because of this, every first- or second-semester biology student at my university gets the chance to dissect a mouse. These mice are usually the leftover control groups from experiments that have long ended. They're killed and then frozen to be thawed and cut open later. No additional deaths just for educational purposes, only mice that would have been killed anyway!
Studying the anatomy of a mouse can help understand human anatomy. It's also easier to acquire 50 dead mice than 50 corpses ...
But let's now proceed to the actual image of the dissection, shall we?
Last chance for those who want to abort. This picture of a cute puppy is all that's between you and a dead mouse.
pixabay.com
Here we go:
If you're familiar with human anatomy, you might notice many similarities. I numbered some of the features I want to talk about.
This is the heart. It beats between 310 and 840 times per minute which is really fast compared to a human. Our resting heart rate is usually between 60 and 100 beats per minute. A heart rate over 300 bpm in a human a bit unhealthy and should technically not be possible.
Next to the tiny heart, you can see something vaguely triangle shaped. That's the right lung (yes I know it's on the left but the mouse lies on its back so technically, it's the right lung). While cutting open the ribcage, the lung collapsed which was caused by air entering the space between the lung and the chest wall. @suesa
The liver is a large organ, in humans and in mice. It stores nutrients, detoxifies our body and plays a big part in our fat metabolism. I recently attended a lecture by Prof. Dr. Claus Hellerbrand where he detailed the connection between fatty livers and liver disease. The gist was that having a fatty liver might promote cancer growth and makes existing cancer more aggressive.
Take care of your liver, people.Yes, this arrow points at two parts. This is the uterus, making this a female mouse. The uterus is special, it's a so-called uterus bicornis. That means the uterus is split into two "horns". It's normal for mice but a problem if it occurs in humans.
Last but not least, the bladder! Nothing special here, but mice can be used to research bladder cancer.
Today's "Suesa's favorite" is @fredrikaa
He works at ESA (the European Space Agency) and likes to share amazing things with us. Check out his post about beautiful sattelite images - or maybe you'd rather like to know something about Spaceport Norway? Take this unique chance to learn directly from the source!
You never feel weirded out by cutting into something that used to be alive and not a chicken or other meat people eat?
Hm, we started out small, with an earthworm. I think as I worked myself up to the mouse (which was last) I learned to detach myself from the fact that it was a living animal once. As soon as it's dead, it's nothing more than a plant. I don't have problems taking apart a plant.
It's different while the animals are still alive of course. Doing experiments with them, injecting them with stuff and finally killing them causes me actual emotional distress. I can only do it when I know it's for scientific purposes or to end their suffering (once had to kill a mouse with a necrotic tail. Poor animal must have been in terrible pain).
I haven’t dissected an animal in a long time but I definitely didn’t do it as cleanly as you. Good form!
Wonderful post!! Nice work dissecting the mouse. A lot of similarities between human and the mouse organs. You did well. It doesn't look scary to me but I guess it because it's in the screen.
I salute your bravery...
Lol! I thought that mouse looks very much like a puppy at first...
:p
Cutest cut up animal everrrrr!
Not as graphic as I imagined. I got No 3 correct and failed others :) Livers are sure an important organ of the body that is about to witness a deluge of alcohol in the coming days.
I think it's better experiments are done on mice than on humans. We can't eat our cake and have it.
Thanks for sharing.
I have never dissected any animal. I however got 1, 3 and 5 correct. I am surprizing myself :p
Thanks for the puppy, the puppy helped.
@suesa that's one clean dissection. Dissecting a pig's heart back in high school was one of the most interesting things we did. Also, it is remarkable how similar the insides of mice are to our insides. We're all mammals after all.
if its for scientific reasons, how come we cant stop doing it already?
i mean, must be 1.000.000 of mices dissected since start of 2017 in the world. who knows how many of them got fully documented, with pictures, explanations and results of countless tests already done and available to study.
actually my question would be / what did humanity gained from this particular dead mouse?
This particular dead mouse first served as a control group for research (these have to be killed off in any case when the experiment is over). Without a control group, your experiment is basically useless.
This mouse further served an educational purpose. I learned how to correctly dissect a mouse, which I might have to do later and should do properly. Messing up a dissection might lead to a loss of your results and thus a completely unnecessary death of the animal.
In the EU, every mouse that's killed for experimental purposes needs to be documented.
This year our area's been over-run with mice. I'm more fond of my cat taking care of the problem than I am of finding a mouse hoard in my bed, a nest of babies in my drawer, or even having a mouse run across me in the middle of the night (all true stories and all have happened more than once!) It's getting into weather when our animals no longer need flea meds... until they start catching or interacting with the mouse population. Mice bring the fleas into the house. I'm not a huge fan of hunting but I think I can do with a few less mice. I always treat my cat when she brings me gifts.
If you like I can send you a cage full of 'rescued' mice that my cat has decided to play with instead of killing. I'm getting mighty tired of her bringing them into the living room and letting them loose so we can watch her catch them again! 😉
But it's the Christmas season - and I need my liver poison to get through all the family gatherings that are coming up!
Can I start worrying about my liver in January?
You can, but no guarantee that it isn't too late by then :P