Hi All,
Wanted you thoughts on this as my prac classes startnext Tuesday (19/3). This uni have dissection for EVERY prac and it is a core unit for my Environmental Science course. I have spoken to the teacher who says I can choose not to participate in the dissections. But as an upcoming test requires you to have labelled drawings/photos of the animals that have been dissected,(also of live and preserved animals,) she has asked me to get someone to draw/take photos for me.
My gut feeling is that:
1) this is still participating in the prac (as she expects me to attend) by using photos of dissected animals and therefore (despite not doing the dissections) am saying this practice is ok. I kinda want to make a statement saying that I want to learn in an alternative way that doesn't harm animals over and over each year.
2) being in the prac is a waste of time as I won't be doing anything to learn.
3) Animal Ethics wise- they are using insects which don't have backbone thus in their opinion don't apply to ethics- they can be used whenever.
Here's a list of how animals are being used:
-Earthworm dissection (student to do)
-Already dissected round worm
-Dissection of termite
-Dissection of garden snail
-Fresh specimen of rainbow trout to dissect
-Cockroach dissection (fresh, mounted/dead)
-Lamprey dissected
-Dissected yabby
-Whole mount of flat worm, crab, scorpions and spiders.
-Centipedes & Millipedes- whole mount;
-Larva of lamprey (whole mount)
-Slide of Paramecium-single celled freshwater animal
-Slide of Amoeba-shapeless unicellular organism
-Slide of Hydra- small muti-cellular animal found if fresh water
-Live small muti-cellular animal found if fresh water
-Live specimen of sea anemone
-Live flat worm, leech, marine worm, earthworm to observe movement
-live culture of vinegar eels
-Fresh mussle
-Live Marine snail, sea slug, chiton worm
-Slatter and shrimp
-Preserved scorpions and spiders
-Preserved specimen of rabbit fish
-preserved specimen of shark skeleton and dissected organs of a shark
-Preserved Centipedes and Millipedes
-Preserved Squid or Octopus
-Preserved Worms
The teacher has said that you can't use drawings from books as this won't help for the test (where I think you have to look at preserved animals). I will ask what will happen with the live specimens. I will ask where the preserved animals came from (ie: did they die naturally, road kill or killed specifically for uni classes).
Opinions and any ideas for alternatives would be very appreciated. I'm thinking of using videos/photos that have already been taken (i.e.: to prove I can learn about anatomy by not having more animals killed). Ideally there would be a computer model program that could I could use.
Anyway, very frustrating. But hopefully I will get a solution I'm happy with. Cheers
