The Importance of Dissection in Biology Teaching

First, what does dissection teach? Dissection provides concrete, hands-on learning experiences with anatomy, one of the most basic of sciences. Dissection takes many of the things students have heard about and read about and gives them firsthand experience in seeing them. There is no other way to do this. I can still remember my first dissection of a mammal. It was a mouse, and I thought it was yucky and I didn't want to touch it. But, being too proud to admit this to my teacher, I cut it anyway. What ensued was a tremendous explosion of consciousness and understanding. All the things I had been learning were suddenly real. It was a profound experience. But it was something more. By confirming all the things I had been taught, it helped me understand that the world was a rational place, and that knowledge and understanding can come from serious study of real specimens and real data. Every year, I see this same kind of learning occur in my own students. This is what teaching is all about. Did you know that pigs have three bronchial tubes, one going into the left lung and two going into the right lung? You can find that out if you dissect a fetal pig. Sheep also have three bronchial tubes, one going into the left lung and two going into the right lung, just like the pig. Look at a sheep pluck. In both the pig and the sheep, the right lung is considerably larger than the left lung, and presumably the presence of the second right bronchial tube is necessary to fully aerate the larger right lung. What a nice example of form being related to function! Did you know that the largest invertebrate brain is about the size of a head of a pin? Look at the brain of a crayfish, one of the most complex of invertebrates, and that's what you'll find. Dissection confirms thousands of little details that we teach everyday, things like: