Frog Blog

Picture from Superiortutoring.net, by Randy Glasbergen

Picture from Neatoshop.com, designed by Matthew Lawson

In class, we dissected a frog that smelled really bad. It has similar organs and a similar digestive system, too, helping the class learn how our digestive system works. The digestive system is the system that turns food molecules into nutrients that our body can use for nutrients. The frog had a lot of *cough* liquid inside and THREE livers! I believe a human has one liver, because THREE is a lot! It also had an esophagus(if you pry the frog's mouth open, you can stick your finger down the esophagus), a gallbladder, heart, stomach, fat bodies, and many more organs that humans have, too. 

The frog my lab group had was a female, which had black eggs inside scattered everywhere that looked like caviar with a female reproductive system. Our frog had a pair of oviducts, which are long tubes that are sometimes mistaken for the small intestine. The oviducts transports the eggs from the ovaries to the cloaca, the opening of the frog. We had to remove the fat bodies and eggs to see each organ clearly. I could tell that the frog was ready for hibernation because it had a lot of fat bodies that looked like spaghetti.

Things I enjoyed about this lab is that we were able to understand a little better about the different organs in our body. We also got to take the frog's eyeball out and watch it bounce. What I didn't like about the lab is that the class room smelled really bad and the frog's "liquids". Overall, this experience would definitely be a highlight for eighth grade.