Science: Cow Eye Dissection
In class we have been learning about the eye. We looked at the different parts of the eye, what they did, how they did it, and so on. To get a better idea of what the eye actually looks like out of its socket, we dissected a cow’s eye.
The idea of dissecting a cow’s eye was brought up at the beginning of the year when we discussed what types of projects we would be doing in class. I wasn’t sure that it was going to happen, due to the fact that we had been told that we were going to dissect frogs for the past two years and never did. But I still wondered what it might be like. As I thought to myself about what this dissection could look like, I immediately thought of the eye balls that you see around halloween. I was thinking it was going to be very circular, slimy, veiny, and that it would look exactly how you see it when on an animal. I had this image in my mind of an extremely complicated interior of the eye, that would baffle any designer to see how something like that was naturally formed.
Of course I was dead wrong. Before the dissection, I was terrified of what it might be like, and now…nothing has changed. The experiment passed my assumption that it was going to be gross with flying colors. After peaking through a squinted eye to see what it looked like, I was immediately disturbed. I wasn’t able to tell the true shape of the eye due to all of the fat and muscle tissue that covered it.
After peeling of the fat and tissue, I was left with with a some what circular eye ball. The pupil looked kind of like a deflated black balloon, that formed a medium sized circle in the middle of the eye. Our next step was to remove the pupil so that we could see the iris. That was hard. You had to jab the scalpel into the eye and cut around the pupil until you were able to remove it. The iris lined the now present whole in the eye as a black border. You could see the sphincter and dilator muscles on it clearly. Once we had cut the iris out, we were left with this hollowed out eye and what looked like a white marble that was inside of the eye. That was the lens. I had thought that the lens would look like, well, an actual lens. Like a see through covering of the eye. But it turned out to be an oval like whitish-orangish thing that felt sort of like a bouncy ball. It was solid and hard, and when cut through almost looked like an onion with little layers in it. Once we removed the lens and the goo stuff that came with it, we were directed to cut the edges of the eye and bend it inside out to see the tapetum. This was the only thing that was some what not gross (Not the the cutting part, but the actual tapetum). It looked sort of like the inside of an abalone shell with these merging shinning colors of green, blue, black, and silver. That was the end of our dissection.
I wouldn’t say that this was a pleasant experiment, but it did give me a lot better of an understanding on the eye and the inner workings of it. When a teacher is explaining something or telling you something like what the eye looks like inside and out, you have your doubts. The facts doesn’t really sink in until your actually witnessing it for yourself. Although I sucked it up and did the dissection today, I just don’t think I have the stomach to handle another one. It was very uncomfortable for me and I don’t wish to do it again.
