This week in science #9

 This week in science I did many things.  One thing we did was dissect animals and we got new organisms to dissect.  We were given a mouse, frog, perch(type of fish), and a skate(a type of stingray). They all smelled pretty bad.  On the first day of dissection we picked an animal and given a paper that us instructions.  The instructions were to take pictures of the different sides of the skate, like the dorsal and ventral views. Then we were given white pieces of paper  to draw those views, and as groups of 2 each person got 1 side to draw.  After that we had to all label the different parts of the skate from David's blog, next we uploaded them to google docs.  The most horrible part came next and it make me nauseous through the whole day, dissection.  Me and my partner dissected the skate and took out what another instruction sheet told us to do, like the liver and digestive system, nasty.

This week in science I learned quite a few things.  The dissection we did was very interesting.  I learned things like bravery, I saw that pushing yourself to do something is not all that bad.  I didn't want to ever cut up an animal like I did yesterday.  I learned how thick a stingrays skin actually is.  I learned how terrible preserved water and animals smell.  We also learned that there are specific ways to holding dissecting tools so you don't hurt your self.  I learned many animal facts, i didn't know skates have many rows of teeth, and pointy spikes all over their body.

In my group, that was spilt into two partners each organism, one group had a perch and one had a skate. In my case I had a skate (which means the other group had the perch). I think that there were actually many things similar about these organisms. For example, both animals were marine animals. Also they both had gills to help them breath under the water. Their skin was also pretty thick and a bit hard to cut with the scalpel. They both had a tail and fins that help them float and manuvure through the water. There were a lot more differences too. The skate was much bigger. The perch's eyes were kinda on either side of its head while the skate had its eyes on the dorsal side of its body, with no eyelids!! The perch's facial structures and part were all in the front of its body, while the skate had its gills, nostrils, and mouth on the bottom where it's belly is. Also the skate had spikes all over its body, mostly on its head, tail and fins. When finding the gender of the animal the skate has somethings called clasps, they hung on each side next to the tail. If they had them that would mean its a male, if not, it is a female. I thought that the marine animals would be the easiest, they kinda were except they were the smelliest.

TWIS #8

This week in science we got the chance to dissect a couple of preserved organisms.  My group had to dissect a giant grasshopper, I didn't like it.  It smelled horrible and made me nauseous.  We looked and took pictures of the grasshopper's Dorsal view, Ventral view, mouth parts, and side view.  In my picture i drew all of these and in the second picture i dissected it and pinned it down  to show its insides. 

Then we uploaded these same pictures and more to google docs.

This week in science I learned many things. One thing I learned was how disgusting it is inside of a bug. I never knew what it looked like in a bug, I couldn't really tell what was what in the grasshopper. I also learned that grasshoppers have weird pads on there feet that to me kinda looked like palms. Also I noticed that they have spikes on their legs, probably for protection. I saw that grasshoppers really do look like how they showed them to look like in the movie "A Bugs Life".