e time to get to know our frog, we decided to name it Kermit (my teacher, "Very Original"). Later one, we discovered our frog was a girl. So we changed its name to Kermita.The first thing my lab partners and I saw were the blood vessels. When we made the "doors" with the skin in the frog, my lab partner noticed the blood vessels right away. I had a hard time believing her. I always thought that the blood vessels sort of roamed around the body. I was wrong. When my teacher pointed the blood vessels out, I was extremely astonished. The blood vessels were kind of stuck onto the skin. It was almost as if the blood vessels were drawn onto to the skin.
Once we cut through the layers of muscles, we came to the organs. Remember when I said we discovered the frog was a girl, well this is how we knew. When we opened it up, the eggs were the first thing we saw. Because there were millions of them, they took up a huge portion of the frog. The eggs were small and black. To study the organs, we had to scoop out the eggs. This is when I started to feel bad about cutting open a frog. I was surprised that the eggs weren't protected by anything. In the human body, the eggs are in the ovaries and are the size of a cell. On the other hand, the eggs in the frog were visible to the naked eye. Seeing as most
organisms exist to reproduce, you would think the reproductive organs and parts would be protected. The next thing we saw was really disgusting. They were these spaghetti shaped things in an orange and yellow color. I'm pretty sure you've already guessed it. They were the fat bodies. Luckily, Kermita wasn't fat, so there wasn't much fat to take out.After we pulled out the fat, we were able to see the organs. Did you know that a frog has three livers? I didn't. I was flabbergasted when I saw the three livers. At first, I thought it was the lungs and the stomach. I was obviously wrong. The three livers are called the right lobe, the left anterior lobe, and the left posterior lobe. The liver's function is very important. It produces bile, a substance that breaks down the fats in the body. Underneath the livers, wass the gall bladder, the stomach, and the intestines. The function of the gall bladder is to store the bile
the liver produces until it is needed. The function of the stomach I would think is quite obvious - it breaks down the food through mechanical and chemical digestion. The chemical digestion is when the hydrochloric acid and pepsin in the stomach break down the food. After the stomach, the food goes into the small intestine. The function of this organ is extremely important. It extracts all of the nutrients in the chyme. The large intestine is not at all like the large intestine in the human body. It looked a lot like the stomach. The large intestine seemed to be the same size as the stomach too. The difference is the function of the large intestine is to prepare wastes for elimination from the body.We also saw the heart and lungs. The heart pumps the blood. It was white and it actually looked like a legitimate heart. Since it is a major organ, it is protected by the peritoneum (a spider web like membrane that covers the organs). Because there was no air in the lungs, they looked deflated. This is because the frog was preserved.
All in all, dissecting a frog was a fun learning experience. Frogs are interesting creatures and learning how their body works made them even better.
If you are interested in learning more about a frog's anatomy visit the website below:
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