That got your attention! I’ve been learning some dissection terms. Autopsy is generally used in relation to humans and looks at cause of death.
A necropsy usually refers to animals. It looks at how the animal’s body
works as well as the possible cause of death.
Here’s a picture of the pygmy right whale fresh out of the freezer on Saturday, ready for the necropsy. The white stuff you can see is ice!
The scientific team are all here and have spent today planning how it’s all going to go. External measurements first – guess how much it weighs!
We’ll be blogging from about 9am tomorrow. See you then.
9 Comments
What are you going to dissect first and how many shark bites has it had? Oh yeah I think it weighs 65kg.
how did you get the word “Necropsy”
Hi Tom!
Now – there’s going to be two sets of first cuts done by the team.
Dr Joy Reidenberg will be cutting away the skin from its chin to see how the bones of the jaw are connected. She wants to find out how it uses its jaw to feed.
I can see 3 sharbites so far – maybe more when they turn it over.
65kg! thats nothing! How much does your teacher weigh?
Kia ora Mohammad!
I first learnt about this word from the scientists because I used the word autopsy and they’d told me that was more related to people.
What the scientists are performing is a post mortem (meaning ‘after death’) & they’ll be finding out how it lived and how it died.
125kg then
Liiam is far more modestly sized then that. How long does the procedure take? What kinds of things will you find out about it?
Not bad Tom – he weighs in at 141kg.
A lot more than your teacher (sorry Lliam!)but I was wanting you to think heavier – I think your teacher weighs a wee bit more than 65kg!
Hi Lliam
Its lunchbreak right now – I will ask the scientists your questions after and write a new post.
why the heart is imfortant to us