I just got out of this lab at school that lasted from 1030 to 1700. The lab was designed to teach us about the heart through the use of live animals, I was told not to many schools do it anymore. We had a pig that was fairly large(54lbs) that was anesthetized with propofol, intubated and on a vent, had IV's for hydration, and a bladder catheter for urine on a table when we walked in. We had to cut down it's neck and expose the veins to insert catheters for the drugs we were going to push. We also had to hook it up to an EKG and a blood pressure monitor. I won't bore you with all the details but several things were strange, seeing/cutting living tissue, cracking open the chest and watching the heart beat/holding it as it beat. At one point we induced ventricular fibrillation and then attempted to shock(defibrillate) the pig back to life. It's whole body jumped like on tv, I was the one doing the shocking and saying "clear" it was kinda cool. We got a normal electrical rhythm back but the heart wasn't beating(called pulseless electrical activity), the atria did continue though, just not the ventricles. Pig was dead at this point , my lab partner cut out it's heart and there were already large clots in the heart chambers. Overall I felt kinda bad for all the pigs, even though everyone else was hoorah about it. It was an awesome learning experience though I'll never forget it.

 

Yeah, our physiology lab was done all in a computer lab using shitty flash animation computer simulations. I didn't mind too much though, i'm an ecology guy so i don't care much about physiology of pigs or what have you, and it made the lab easy as ----

 

That is pretty real. I have cut up a dead pig to roast it. Also field dressed animals when hunting.

Diong it to a living animal would be a strange experience though. Suppose it is like anything else though, weird til you do it a couple of times.

 

those things safe to eat after that i have this huge cat that i can't afford to feed, so if you wanna get rid of that pig, lemme know. at least you'll know it was for a good cause

 

you know was also a weird experience castrating pigs and cows, feel bad for the little guys (i work on a farm)