Chicken Wing Dissection
Accelerated Biology
Introduction:
Explain how muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments are used to move the human arm. Makes sure to use flexion
and extension in your explanation.
Hypothesis:
If a chicken wing is homologous (evolutionary similar) to the human arm, what will you expect by dissecting the
chicken wing?
Methods:
Describe in a paragraph, past tense, how you systematically went about dissecting the chicken wing.
1.
2.
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4.
5.
Skin—use the scissors to cut the skin off the muscle pieces of the chicken. Make sure to make observations of
the skin and fat in the tissue below.
Muscles—use tweezers to pull on the chicken wing “bicep” look at what happens at the joint to the bones. Do
the same pulling on the “tricep”.
Make observations of any blood, blood vessels you see.
After showing your teacher your model of movement, pull apart the joint. Observe the cartilage covering the
bone as well as ligaments.
Break one of the large bones and observe the inside.
Data and Analysis:
1. Complete the table below:
Structure
Skin
Fat
Muscle pairs
Tendon
Bone
Ligament
Joint
Cartilage
2.
Observation
Analysis (Function)
Sketch the bone and muscle, labeling—tendon, bicep, tricep, bone, joint.
Discussion:
Answer your hypothesis and describe how the chicken wing was a model of muscle pairs causing movement.
(Make sure to discuss as many of the parts of the musculoskeletal system as possible!)
Homologous means that structures have a similar evolution but a different function. Discuss how the chicken wing
was homologous to the human arm.
Describe two roles that the skeletal system plays based on what you saw in the lab.
The ACL ligament holds your knee joint together. Explain why tearing the ACL can be so detrimental to an athlete.
The Achilles tendon attaches your calf muscle to your heel bone. Explain why tearing this tendon would be so
detrimental to an athelete.
Error—what limitations were there to using the chicken wing as a model of movement in the human arm.