Pig Dissection Lab Report

Once the major veins and arteries of the pig were tested out on, I had to shave the skin off of the back of my pig in order to reveal the spinal cord of my pig. In order to do this, I cut a small slip of flesh off of the pig's back starting from just caudal to the where the pinna attached to the pig's head and ending approximately one centimeter cranial from the tail of the pig. I then began to shave away bits of the muscle on the back of the pig by turning my scalpel at an angle that was slightly downcast, as to allow chunks to be removed at a time without going too deep. Once I got to where the spinal column had a slight brownish tint, I had to use dissection scissors to open the spine up and see the spinal cord. The internal structures …show more content…
The remove the scalp, I had to first cut the skin surrounding the skull cap off by cutting from my previous incision from the spincal cord and working around the head until I came in a full circle and the incision met back up with the starting point. I then pulled the skin away from the skull with little effort by inserting my finger under a small flap of skin on the caudal end of the head and pulling the skin cranially. I then punctured a small hole into the side of the skull using the dissection scissors and carefully slid the dissection scissors into the hole and started cutting the skull in a strait line across the top to the other side. I then slid the dissection scissors under the skull at top and started to cut caudally until the cut was close to the medulla oblongata and looked similar to half of a plus sign. I cut the cranial half of the skull in the same fashion, only stopping where I cut the skin off of the skull. To finish getting the skull off of my pig, I had to use the dissection scissors to cut pieces of the skull out of the four sections of the skull that I had created. I also used the tweezers for this part because they would help hold the pieces in places before they were cut away from the rest of the skull. Once I removed the part of the skull that