So you decided that you don’t want to cut up animals. Now what? There are lots of alternatives to animal dissection. Talk to your teacher, parents or principal about some of the options featured below.
Animal Learn
This group offers a FREE lending library of ethical dissection resources including as CD ROMS, books or plastic models. You can learn about anatomy, physiology, and psychology lessons without harming animals. Check it out!
Computer Programs
Some dissection computer programs listed below are free and others cost money. If you can get your teacher or school to order programs, let them know the school will save money in the long run because CD ROMS, unlike animal specimens, can be reused year after year!
Also tell your teacher the other benefits to using CD ROM virtual dissections. Students can:
- share software between classrooms
- learn at their own pace
- test their knowledge at each step
- use it without their teacher’s supervision, CD ROMs are self-guided
Virtual Frog Dissection Ipad App
Imagine dissecting a frog on your iPad! Emantra's Frog Dissection is the first of its kind to hit the app store. This app is for educators and learners alike! Features include touch operated dissection and individual organs can be viewed in large 3D imagery. Woah.
Virtual Frog Dissection Kit
Provides a free online frog dissection.
Cow’s Eye Dissection
On this site you can watch a dissection, dissect your own cow’s eye or learn more about eyes in general – all online!
Digital Frog CD ROMS
This Canadian company has CD ROMS/software providing a full interactive frog dissection, including all major body systems, an in-depth anatomy section, and an investigation of the diversity and ecology of frogs. Features a fully interactive dissection with full-screen videos and over 70 anatomy screens covering every system in the body, with comparisons to humans.
ScienceWorks CD ROMS
They provide quality educational products for science teaching, learning and more! Choose from CD ROMS that offers students a virtual/computer simulation of a fetal pig, frog, perch, crayfish, earthworm, or a cat.
V Frog
V-Frog, which operates on a personal computer using a standard mouse, actually simulates nearly unlimited manipulation of specimen tissue. As a result, every dissection is different, reflecting each student’s individual work. The software is designed for grades 7 through 12, plus advanced placement biology students.
Books
Undercover a Frog
By: Aimee Bakken
Frogs: They swim, they leap, they hop, and some can even fly. There are poisonous frogs, hairy frogs, singing frogs, albino frogs, and even glass frogs with translucent skin you can actually see through! Uncover the secrets of this amazing animal — that’s anuran to you frog specialists — layer by layer, in this new title in the popular Uncover It series. Young frog fans love dissecting all the weird and wild facts, cool illustrations and diagrams, and unique 3-D layered model of a frog. With every turn of the page, the frog is deconstructed before their eyes, as the model demonstrates the hidden workings of the frog’s body.
Vivisection and Dissection in the Classroom: A Guide to Conscientious Objection
By: Gary L. Francione and Anna E. Charlton
Publisher American Anti-Vivisection Society (1992)
Aimed for an American audience, (but still helpful for Canadians) this book provides practical and theoretical assistance on the issue of students rights at every education level. The book is primarily focused on U.S. Federal and State laws, student legal rights and assistance to lawyers. But don't dismiss it for its American content, applicable to everyone, the book also offers strategies for approaching and negotiating with administrators, sample letters, and ways of documenting events to protect the student.
From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse
By: Nick Jukes & Mihnea Chiuia
Published by the International Network for Humane Education.
This 544-page publication, From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse: Alternative methods for a progressive, humane education, investigates state-of-the-art alternative tools and approaches to support ethical and effective knowledge and skills acquisition within biological science, medical and veterinary medical education.
'Alternatives' include humane tools such as multimedia computer simulation, training manequins and simulators, and humane approaches such as student self-experimentation, clinical work with animal patients, and the use of ethically-sourced animal cadavers.
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