What are the positive impacts of dissecting animals?
2 Answers
Dissection allows you to look at the animal's anatomy first hand.
Explanation:
Seeing is believing and doing is learning. Dissection is invaluable in learning Anatomy .
Only when you carry out a dissection do you get a first hand experience of what the inside of an animal looks like.
Relative positions of the organs are also understood better.
It helps you to appreciate the differences between animals of different species/taxonomic groups.
If a young student of Biology aspires to study medicine then animal dissection is the best way to hone skills in taking apart an organism systematically and neatly, which will help in performing surgery and in practice of internal medicine.
Dissecting animals help us to understand the anatomy and physiology of the animals in comparison to other animals and humans.
Explanation:
Dissection of animals help us to understand two major branches of biology: Anatomy & Physiology.
Usually dissections are done in colleges and also in high schools of vertebrate organisms which are anatomical or physiologically similar to humans. An example could be frog:
- Frog has an anatomical similarity to humans like the position of different organs in the body cavity.
- Frog's heart, arteries, lungs, etc are anatomically similar to those of humans.
- Frog heart muscle is physiologically similar to humans. This means frog's heart react in the same way to drugs/hormones as does the human heart.
So if there is discovery of a new chemical that might help humans, we will have to check its effect first on different vertebrate organs (like Heart, Kidneys, Brain), because it cannot be directly used on Humans which could be unethical & unmanagable. So we have to use animals for testing of new drugs before we even come close to human trials.
Dissection of animals are usually governed by following principles:
- Their anatomy or physiology should be similar to other animals or humans
- Their reproductive cycle should produce many offspring at one go
- They shouldn't be on the endangered list
- They should have a relatively short natural life span.
