Wait, they were dissecting LIVE frogs before the 90s??!
Posted by Illustrious-Lead-960@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 63 comments
That’s what the Ask Historians thread says anyhow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qgh1ol/did_kids_actually_have_to_kill_their_frogs_before/
In my science class I was brought a dead frog circa 1996 when we did our dissections. Shortly before that they had made you SLAUGHTER it??! What could that POSSIBLY have to do with learning anatomy, killing a frog?!
Some of y’all are several years older than me did any of you have to kill the frog yourself?
Barnaby_Q_Fisticuffs@reddit
Sounds like I was lucky. I’m a GenXer who had to dissect my frog in the late 80s. Thankfully, our frogs were already dead, preserved in formaldehyde. (My lab partner was my best friend, and we named the frog “Kermit.” We thought we were super clever when, a few months later, we named our dissected fetal pig “Miss Piggy.”)
lemonheadlock@reddit
I went to a school with a lot of gang activity. We didn't dissect anything. They didn't want to give us scalpels.
fidgetypenguin123@reddit
I never dissected anything either however I went to "average suburban" schools so I don't think gangs were problems. Maybe just the "upper" science classes did it? I wasn't a part of those so not sure lol.
I'm curious if my teen now - a current sophomore - will ever do dissections. Not sure if there's lots of gang activity per se in his school specifically, but it's definitely more of an urban school as part of the greater area of a large city and I'm sure some gang stuff is sprinkled in based on the fact some middle schoolers here were arrested for murdering a man while being in a gang a couple of years ago 🫠
lemonheadlock@reddit
Yikes, that's crazy. I don't remember any specific crimes, just that it was a rough place sometimes. Middle school was the tough one compared to high school. The adults didn't help. We had security guards who were former XFL or arena football players, I can't remember, but they drove around in golf carts and got way too cozy with the female students. We also had a special program for pregnant/new mom students. I don't know if those two things were ever related or not, but, who knows. Also, Hurricane Andrew wrecked the school and they didn't really repair it the entire time I was there.
HardyCheil@reddit
In Scotland, we didn't do frogs. I do remember dissecting a cow's eye though.
KerissaKenro@reddit
We were told that it was essentially brain dead. So it supposedly didn’t hurt or anything. But, yeah. Its little heart was still beating when we spread its chest wide open. This would have been ‘93 or ‘94
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
We had all kinds of critters we had to dissect in high school and college but never had to dispatch them ourselves. They came in a bucket of formaldehyde.
My son is a pre-vet animal science major and in one of his labs a few weeks back the professor iced a lamb with a captive bolt gun and then dissected it in front of everybody to display all the organs and then showed them how to butcher the meat.
Substantial_Relief96@reddit
In 7th grade, so 2001, we didn't dissect live frogs. However, it was a big part of the grade to cut the skin off our frogs the best we could, then make "clothes" with the skin and have a fashion show. With a makeshift runway and everything. We even had to write and present a description of what we made as if we were fashion designers. I thought it was pretty fucked then and still think it's pretty fucked we did that.
Harlander77@reddit
Was your teacher Leatherface?
Rise-O-Matic@reddit
Not_a_werecat@reddit
Yeah. My dad had to do a live dissection.
They shove a needle into the spinal cord to paralyze it. Barbaric. :(
jreashville@reddit
They would force kids to cut up live animals in school and then be like “why are so many of these kids growing up to be serial killers?”
CaptZombieHero@reddit
I would argue more people have grown up as serial killers/mass murderers post dissecting live frogs.
Harlander77@reddit
glances awkwardly in historian
GarminTamzarian@reddit
aka "vivisection"
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit
Pithing
Not_a_werecat@reddit
Yes, I know.
The class called it a dissection. Presumably to make it seem less grotesque.
GarminTamzarian@reddit
That's why admin called it a dissection, anyways. The class presumably didn't know any better.
sanedragon@reddit
I didn't have to kill the frog but we did have to kill the invertebrates.
nwbrown@reddit
Wasn't killing the frog a scene from ET or some other movie in the 80's?
swiggs313@reddit
Yeah, it was ET. They were supposed to knock them out with chloroform soaked cotton balls before dissecting them. But then ET got Elliot telepathically drunk and drink!Elliot decided he wasn’t having anyone murder frogs on his watch.
xtlhogciao@reddit
I hope Elliot thanked E.T. for giving him the (drunk) courage to kiss Erika Eleniak (yes, that was her who he kissed).
TakingYourHand@reddit
Can't help but think about how that traumatic event led her to become a stripper that jumps out cakes for sailors.
icanimaginewhy@reddit
I was in an anatomy and physiology class in high school in the 90s and we pithed live frogs. It was pretty brutal. You held them upside down by the legs, smacked their head on the table to knock them unconscious, cut the top of their head off, and shoved a pithing rod down their spine to destroy the spinal cord.
ChromeDestiny@reddit
On The Boxed Life CD Henry Rollins tells a story about having to dissect frogs. He mentions someone else in his class kills theirs in five seconds and someone else's frog breaks free and runs off with pins still stuck in it's legs.
When I dissected a frog and a fetal pig they were both already dead.
SalukiKnightX@reddit
I remember dissecting frogs in junior high. Folks wanted to gross me out playing with the removed eyes but honestly I don’t remember what the lesson was.
Fabulous-South-9551@reddit
We had to do pig fetuses but you could opt out and do a computer version which I thankfully chose to do. The whole class reeked of whatever those pigs were soaked in. I’ll never forget it.
Puzzled_Loquat@reddit
I did the fetal pig in biology in college. It took a few weeks to get through it. By the end, it was awful all around.
merlinsmushrooms@reddit
Yeah. Knock em out with chloroform and pith, dissect and examine living tissue.
Year- 2000
Age- 11
Trauma- 💯
I got to murder my innocence and dissect a frog all at once! 🥲
elpintor91@reddit
I have a memory of dissecting a frog my senior year of high school. For some reason the smell is what I remember most. Kinda like fishy liver. Don’t remember having to kill it though
Illustrious-Lead-960@reddit (OP)
Yeah, it smelled funny. Acidic. Like vinegar maybe.
Echterspieler@reddit
I am so glad i never had to do that. It was a common trope in any movie or show with school in it. I was terrified of having to do it.
Illustrious-Lead-960@reddit (OP)
I was afraid too until they brought us already dead frogs. I could handle that.
TheyCallMeSuperChunk@reddit
I did it (not in the U.S.) in 9th grade, in 1995. Each group of maybe 5 students had to numb and kill their own frog then dissect it. Part of it was to watch the circulatory system still in action with the heart pumping for a couple of minutes after killing the frog (ice pick + formaldehyde to the brain stem)
Traditional_Entry183@reddit
Holy shit that's awful. I had no idea. Doing it to dead ones was bad enough.
Spartan04@reddit
We had a worm, a perch, and a frog in high school biology. All already dead and preserved thankfully. If we had to kill them ourselves I would have noped on out.
I remember making it through but definitely having a few times where I had to look away due to thinking it was disgusting and I didn't want to be sick. I also remember that gloves were not provided but you could bring them in if you wanted so a few of us, including me, did bring in disposable gloves.
I see some people here had to dissect cats. I'm a cat person so if that were on the lesson plan I'd stay home those days. No chance in hell I could do that.
usernames_suck_ok@reddit
Had to dissect a cat in Anatomy & Physiology in college. Already dead.
ManInTheMorning@reddit
In high school we did a fish, then a fetal pig, then if you wanted to take senior level biology you could do the cat.
All very dead.
GarminTamzarian@reddit
"Alright class, once you've selected your kitten, grab one gunny sack and one rope each, then form an orderly line down by the canal."
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit
We had to do this my first year in college 97'. The dissection began with pithing the frog so that when you opened it up you could see the heart beat and other live goings on. 😭 It was incredibly disturbing.
nonexistentnight@reddit
I was in a summer program sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the mid 90s. As part of it we vivisected pithed frogs. We tracked their heart rates using a probe attached to a computer as we dosed them with epinephrine and such. I remember the professor in charge of it being kind of upset about it.
We also drank concentrated sugar solutions and tracked our blood sugar as our bodies metabolized it. Professor said one year they found out a kid was diabetic that way. It all sounds pretty wild west looking back.
bluejaysmandy@reddit
In 1999, each pair of students in my class were given a worm, frog, and fish-all dead-to dissect, (then the class watched the teacher with various cow parts). I barely made it through watching someone else dissect the worm, then I noped out of the class for the rest. I spent the rest of that week by myself on the hallway floor outside the room filling out worksheets labeling the parts of a cell.
brokenman82@reddit
We did pig fetuses
badchefrazzy@reddit
My mother, a child of the 60s had to do a few animal dissections, she not once mentioned having to kill any of them herself.
gurnard@reddit
We did pre-butchered chicken wings. Cut the skin, identify a tendon and a blood vessel. Done in 5 minutes. Quite the anti-climax from what movies had me built up for. I assume a budgetary thing. Backwater town.
Putrid-Art-1559@reddit
We did a frog, a squid, and owl poop from what I remember. Definitely did not have to kill anything. I’m not sure I could have gone through with that. I know we were supposed to do a cat but that never happened for whatever reason and I am thankful.
mellercopter@reddit
We had to do a live dissection in an advanced bio class in the late 90s. It was awful.
RedSolez@reddit
I had to dissect a frog in 3rd grade but it was already dead. Still, I can't imagine my own 3rd graders doing that now. We also toured a turkey farm with the girl scouts in 1st grade and they showed us exactly how they killed the turkeys. The late 80s/early 90s was a wild time 😂 But apparently not as bad as before that!
KiniShakenBake@reddit
I had to kill my own frog to dissect in high school. I don't think it was a common by the time I got there, but I definitely had to.
irate_alien@reddit
i did watched this during a summer science camp in the 80s when i was maybe 10-12? the teacher did it by first stunning the frog with chloroform in some gauze. then she stuck it in the brain with a big needle. pinned its arms and legs down like froggy jesus, and cut its chest open so we could see the heart beating. kind of traumatic and i won't forget it.
Wrong-Local-4283@reddit
we dissected dead piglets sophmore year. (maybe junior, i forgot which tbh)
Katniprose45@reddit
We had to name it, take care of it for a week, THEN kill it.
🤔😅
Jk, jk, we actually dissected minks and fetal pigs at my school instead of frogs. No idea why. Was pretty interesting, though.
eyelinerqueen83@reddit
Yep like on ET
tracyveronika@reddit
6thBornSOB@reddit
We did frogs, fish, and someone brought in a cow brain (farmers kid) for us to poke at…none of it alive. Would have been between 94-97
Impossible_Turn_7627@reddit
My anatomy class did cats. Early seed planted in this now-vegan person.
iridescentnightshade@reddit
I had to dissect a frog in Jr. High sometime around 91/92?? It was definitely dead already. It had to be well doused in formaldehyde (man, I'm remembering that smell 🥴) so it could last the few days it took to complete the dissection.
PersianCatLover419@reddit
Yeah they did, my grandmother and other relatives from the greatest generation went to high school in the 1930s and 1940s and they dissected frogs in science class. My silent generatiin parents did as well as high school students in the 1950s and early 1960s. My mom went to medical school and dissected a cow's eye and later did autopsies.
MOSbangtan@reddit
I did it in like 1999 maybe…
Crafty_Original_7349@reddit
We had dead frogs in formalin in middle school. We also got dead cats in high school to dissect. It didn’t bother me, but my lab partner was thoroughly freaked out.
LockPleasant8026@reddit
I'm guessing it's so they didn't have to preserve the frogs in a lab beforehand and ship extra chemicals like formaldehyde.
swiggs313@reddit
I’d assume that was considered normal, or else that scene from ET just got a lot weirder…
SatiesUmbrellaCloset@reddit
I remember being in college (in the 2010s, well after y'all's time) watching an old VHS tape of a vivisection. I seem to remember the point being made that it was no longer considered appropriate to actually do this, but since footage of it existed, they might as well still use it