Fish Lab

Well, the week is cruising right on by, one more day I will have have already completed 7 weeks, it's crazy how the days/weeks just keep on trekking!  The week has been pretty uneventful so far.  Yesterday, I did have my lab for my fish medicine and surgery class.  Now, to set the record straight, I have very little interest in going into fish medicine.  However, the class is an easy elective, and with all the time I spend on my core classes, I wanted an easy elective!  Anyways, yesterday we broke off into pairs and we each got a small live goldfish.  First we had to anesthetize it which involved dumping it into a bucket of water containing MS-222, an anesthetic.  Once it was "out" we pulled them out of the water and placed them on moist paper towels.  Then we performed a physical exam, did a skin scraping, clipped the gills (used to check and see whether there is anything wrong with the gills by looking at them under the microscope) and drew blood from the fish's heart (you actually stick the needles right into the fish's heart and pull the blood from there).  The fish were so small that we didn't take much blood at all, it was more to get a feel for how it is done. It was pretty neat, actually working on live animals after sitting around in class for 6.5 weeks straight!

 Interesting fact: fish only have two chambers to their heart (not four like us); one atrium and one ventricle!  The blood from the body goes into the atrium, then into the ventricle and then it is pushed out of the ventricle and travels to the gills which is where the blood picks up the oxygen to bring to the rest of the fish's body.

This weekend I will remain in Champaign minus a little trip to Bloomington for a song leader Christmas Carol lesson.  Our final exam is a week from today and tomorrow, I cannot wait for it to be over!