Biologists have more fun
Lucky for this biology major, on my walk to class everyday I pass the Grant Museum of Zoology, home to 67,000 animal specimens. It’s a curious, curious place. I popped in the other day and this is what I saw:
I’ve learned so much about these animals while at Tech. It was very satisfying to see their bodies up close. Books and lectures kept cropping up in my mind, reminding me of all sorts of amazing phenomena I’ve had the privilege to study. This is just cool: a cheetah can accept a skin graft from any other cheetah! Crazy. It’s true that a lot of the animals at the zoology museum could be seen at a zoo, but there are some glaring exceptions: the museum has preserved the recently extinct quagga and thylacine. I can read about the aye-aye’s bizarre hands all day long, but the awe sinks in when I get to see those hands in person!
I’ve been learning about the brain, spinal cord, and nerves in my neuroscience course. In the same way that the zoology museum made my animal behavior and evolution courses come to life, anatomy lab for neuroscience was electrifying. At UCL the second year biology students don lab coats and invade the medical school’s dissection room. We spent an afternoon, surrounded by cadavers, examining real human brains! We investigated the various protective membranes (your brain has three), lobes (more than three), and fissures (way more than three). We located the optic chiasm (where some of the neurons from your left eye cross over to the right side of your brain and vice versa), where the facial nerves separate from the brain, and the brain’s ventricles. These brains were about five year old and heavy with the weight of chemical preservative. The consistency reminded me of white button mushrooms soaked in water. Finally touching the brain made weeks of lecture suddenly click. It is that “ah ha” moment in the lab and the expressions of “that’s so amazing!” in the zoology museum that keep me pumped about my classes. What gets you pumped?
