Dissection Without Killing a Frog

It has come the season of dissection frogs at every school. However, amphibians like frogs are rapidly exterminated. Recently, a nature-favoring site of dissection appeared, where students can dissect cyber frogs on the Internet without killing frogs.

The web site (www.froguts.com), which Richard Hill student of South Florida Univ. graduate school made for the dissection of a frog, is popular as it enables students to dissect a frog with a cyber mes and scissors, and examine all the internal organs like a real using flash.

Students can closely observe how blood circulate through 3 atria by dissecting heart, what does the brain look like, and how the frog breathe, and magnify the parts with the magnifier.

And the web site (umech.mit.edu/6.021J/schindjr/lab/frog-lab-home.html) that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created for physiology class makes it possible to watch the photos of real dissected frog. In the web site of Lawrence Berkerly National Laboratory (www-itg.lbl.gov/ITG.hm.pg.docs/dissect/info.html), students can assemble the frog by attaching internal organs to the nervous tissues. There is a web site (curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/frog/skin/home.html) where students can interactively dissect a frog.

dongho@donga.com