Frog Lab

Evidence of Work

During this project my partner and I dissected a frog over the course of five days. We dissected it so we could examine examples of each body system and compare them with that of a human. The first thing we studied during the dissection was the external and internal anatomy of the frog and how it differs from ours. The body systems that we identified and studied in the frog were the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, excretory, and the nervous system.

Phylum and Class

The type of frog we dissected was a grass frog and it is part of the amphibian class and it belongs to the chordate Phylum.

Chordate Characteristics: Chordates commonly have a notochord, a dorsal hollow nerve cord, a pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail.

Amphibian Characteristics: Amphibians are cold-blooded, reproduce through external fertilization, they can breath through their skin, and most of all they are able to live in water and on land.

Frog vs. Human Systems

Skeletal System: Where humans have both the tibia and the fibula in their lower leg, frogs only have one bone connecting to their foot. Their leg bones are also much larger in proportion to their body because frogs' main mode of transportation is jumping so their legs have developed to be stronger.

Respiratory System: Unlike humans, frogs have the ability to breath through their skin as well as their lungs. Another difference between the two is that the frog can functionally breath without a diaphragm and instead use their throat to draw air in and out of the lungs.

Reproductive/Excretory System: The frogs' reproductive system is almost completely different then that of a humans. The frog has one opening for everything related to the reproductive and excretory systems including feces, urine, and eggs.

Reflection

I actually really enjoyed participating in the frog dissection lab and for the most part I had a lot of fun. I liked that I was able to focus of actually doing the dissection and learning from experience, know I could complete the questions afterward I'm done without having to rush. I also liked being in a comfortable environment where people could help me if I didn't understand the assignment or I'm not comfortable doing something. My least favorite part was honestly the smell and the general lack of sanitation when doing a dissection. Something I would be interested in learning about is if there are differences in a frog's body systems depending on the environment they live in and if they are part of a subspecies or other factors.

One of the six c's that I worked on during this project was collaboration. We worked in pairs and it allowed people who wanted to be more involved participate directly in the dissection while letting people who were uncomfortable, learn through mostly observation. I worked with a partner who was less enthusiastic about dissecting something, which allowed us to delegate the majority of the writing aspect to her. It was nice being able to rely on someone, knowing they would also complete what needed to be done so I didn't have to worry about it. Something I could work on more is creativity and critical thinking when it came to understanding certain parts of the frog in depth. There were many situations where we were asked to draw a part of the frog and I could have improved the effort I put into completing those sketches.