By: Derek Hu and Ben Colandrea
First we tied down the fetal pig with threads to ensure that it was
secure and that we could enter the body without fear of instability.
We used scissors and scalpel to cut through the diaphragm into the
abdomen. As you can see here my partner and I have opened up
the fetal pig.
Small
Intestine
Liver
Large
Intestine
Here we have a close up of the inside of the pig. Right off that bat
you can see the lungs, small and large intestine, and liver.
Ribs
Spleen
Liver Lobes
Small
Intestines
Here we have pulled up the liver to expose the lobes of the liver, and
you can clearly see again the large and small intestines and the
spleen. Also if you look closely to the side you can see where we cut
into the ribs.
Stomach
Kidney
Umbilical
Cord
Here we pulled aside the intestines to reveal the kidneys, umbilical cord
and stomach.
Here we have removed the intestines. If you were to unravel the whole
thing it would be over 20 feet long! We used scissors to cut away the
bottom of the intestines to remove it from the rest of the pig.
Here is the liver and the lungs of the pig that we have removed.
This is the heart of the pig. It resembles that of a human heart you can
see the shape is similar and you can point out where the atrium and
ventricles are.
Kidneys
Spine
Here we have removed most of the digestive system leaving visible
structures like the spine and kidneys intact.
Finally we moved to removing the brain. After carefully making an
incision in the skull we removed the top skin to reveal the cranium
which covers the brain giving protection.
The cranium is actually quite tough to cut through and took a bit of
force to get through but we removed most of it to reveal the cerebral
cortex of the brain.
Careful cutting allows for the brain to simply slip out of the brain cavity
and here is the pig’s brain shortly after removing it. Notice the distinct
brain like shape and the visible similarities with lobes.
Brain Stem
connects here
with spine.
Finally here is a picture of the pig’s head with the brain removed, the
brain fits snuggly into the cavity and you can see where the brain stem
is attached to which connects the brain with the spine and the whole
nervous system allowing the pig to function.
Mobile Devices
To aid us in our project we used a first
generation iPad to help us to understand
the anatomy of the pig.
 We also used my camera, a digital
camera to take pictures of the inside of
the pig.
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We used the iPad to go onto the website
http://www.whitman.edu/content/virtualpig.
This provided a detailed walkthrough through the
dissection and helped my partner and me to identify
the different organs. In future lessons the iPad is an
invaluable tool because it allows to quickly check
one’s progress during the dissection.
My camera was used to take high resolution pictures
of parts of the pig and then I incorporate these
pictures into my PowerPoint. Without pictures it
would be difficult to simply describe how parts of the
pig looked with words.