By the end of the semester, students taking Biology 105 will have dissected a clam, a blue crab, a crayfish, a lamprey, a shark, a perch, a frog, and either a lab rat or a pig.
Students enrolled in the college’s only zoology class said they like dissecting animals to learn the inner workings of animals’ bodies.
“I think it’s interesting to see how other animals are like me, like, the insides of them and stuff because they’re also different from, you know, humans, and I just don’t know that much about all these different animals,” Madison Lucente, a first-year undecided student, said.
The course, which is not a requirement for any major, counts as a general education science credit.
Professor Paul Bushmann said students in the class learn about animal behavior, not just animal anatomy.
Bushmann said science professors have “worked hard” to dispel the myth that a zoology class is only about dissection.
“Back in the day, zoology … was all anatomy,” Bushmann said. “So we do a lot of things with animals besides just dissecting dead ones. So I think we’ve really improved the course over the years.”
Students dissect animals because, Bushmann said, “the best way to do that is to really look at the anatomy and you can do it in pictures, but it doesn’t look the same.”
Still, Lucente said some of her classmates get “grossed out” when they cut animals open.
“I feel like I’m more confident than most people,” Lucente said. “[Some] people want to step back and they kind of get grossed out. I like to be the person that, like, steps up and it doesn’t gross me out. I don’t know why.”
Legal studies student Miya Walker said she is one of the more “squeamish” students in her class.
“This pushes myself, like, with that limit that I’ve set for myself,” Walker said. “I had anatomy in high school, too. And I never participated in dissections. I had my friend do it. So I think that this is a good opportunity to, like, get out of my comfort zone and learn more.”