Wasically Wabbits!!

Finally, vet school has started. We got to dissect rabbits today!!

The specimens were wild, nuisance rabbits that were shot or caught using ferretry. Ferreting is a legal hunting practice in which ferrets/polecats are sent down burrows to chase the rabbits out the other side where they are caught in nets. My rabbit was shot as were many of young rabbits.

The dissection room is very big and open (much better than A&Ms). The main desk has cameras and TVs are all around the room for viewing. The began with an overview of the tools and how to incise the bunny. The upside of taking the best anatomy at A&M is I knew everything before she said it.

Prof: "You need to make an incision on the..."
ME: "ventral midline."
Prof: "Once you peel back the skin, you will see the..."
ME: "Cutaneous trunci."

The dissection wasn't a guided but we did have pictures to follow along. A typical ventral midline incision and skinning half the rabbit. For most of the class, this was their first dissection and I didn't get to see any of their reactions. Because of my cutting prowess, I quickly, carefully and efficiently skinned my half of the carcass. The next table over loving referred to me as god. We looked at the nerves of armpit and carpal vs hip joints.

We had to make two windows into the side--one in the thorax/chest and one in the abdomen. Because the rabbits aren't preserved and just frozen, the opening the muscles in the abdomen was nasty. The worst smell in lab ever...worse than formaldehyde. I even had to step away to breathe fresh air. Melissa and I identified all the basic organs and answered some quick questions.

It felt great to do some vet-like stuff instead of basic cell biology!

The picture is my rabbit's deskinned foot. Pretty nifty, you can see all the tendons. What's weird is rabbits don't have paw pads...