Ashley's Blog: Chicken Dissection

In this lab, we dissected a store bought chicken carcass. I thought that this lab was really cool and fun because this is chicken that we eat and the stuff that we saw when dissecting it was so unexpected and cool to see! Muscles of the chicken help with the movement. When dissecting, we saw so many different muscles like the pectoralis major and the trapezius. We also say tendons which connects muscles to bones. Something I thought that was really fascinating was when i pulled the upper arm of the chickens arm, the bottom moved too as if it was waving and I found that so intriguing and it looked as if the chicken were waving! The movement was caused by the tendons connecting the muscle and the bone together. The tendons were kind of stretchy and soft and was pretty hard to find. But with help, we were able to see it clearly. (Pictures below!) The chicken muscles were similar to the human muscles in a way but were also different! They were similar in that the sternum was directly in the middle of the body and totally visible just like ours. Also, the under the skin of the chicken, there was a lot of connective tissue which was used to protect the muscles. So, when peeling of the skin, we also had to peel off the connective tissues to get a better view of the muscles and bones. In some animals, like a mole, the ulna and radius are in reversed order compared to humans but in the chicken, it looks just like ours! In anatomical position, the ulna and radius are in the same position as they would be in humans. I learned so much in this lab yet it was so fun to do. I would love to do this again in the future.
Below are pictures from the dissection!