Chicken Leg Dissection Lab!

Nathan Niec

Bio 156 Online

4-16-13

LAB

Chicken Leg Dissection

Procedure:

 

 

1. Put on gloves and collect your tools.
2. Thoroughly rinse and dry one chicken leg. Place it in the dissecting tray.
3. Examine the outside skin tissue. This is the epidermis and the dimples are where feathers emerged. Using scissors and forceps.
4. Cut the skin and peel it away from the muscle.
5. Notice the clear connective tissue that holds the skin to the muscles. As you peel off the skin, you may need to cut away some of this connective tissue. Work slowly and carefully with scissors and forceps until all skin is removed.

6. Describe how the connective tissue looks and feels. What type of connective tissue is this?

The connective tissue appears to be slightly yellow/white, smooth, and thin. The connective tissue surrounding the muscle fibers between the skin in muscle is fascia and fat tissue.

7. Observe, with your naked eye bundles of muscle tissue surrounding the bones. Separate the bundles of muscles by separating them out with your fingers. Begin by inserting your thumb into the muscle of the lower leg. You will need to push forcefully through the shiny lining (called fascia) over the muscle, but it will give way at the natural separations between the muscle bundles. Continue separating the muscle into bundles by forcing your thumb and fingers through the muscle until you are able to distinguish several separate bundles.

1. Describe the arrangement of the muscle bundles.

The individual muscle fibers seem to stick together, takes quite a bit of force when from the fingers considering the surface area of the muscle fibers. The bundles separate, but in different size bundles depending on which ones continue to connect. They are a bright red color and from what I already know about muscle fibers they had a hefty blood supply.

8. The strong, shiny, white cords, called tendons, hold the muscle to the bones. Some of these tendons will pull away from the bone as you separate the muscle bundles. Use a probe, if needed, to find the tendons of the chicken leg. Using the dissection scissors, cut across the tendons at Line A (Figure 1). Observe the numerous tendons and pull the freed muscles down and away from the bone, as if you were peeling a banana. Careful you don't cut any ligaments that attach bone to bone. Look closely at the ligaments.

Examine the two bones in the lower leg. The large bone (Bone A) is the tibia. The small, toothpick-like bone (Bone B) is the fibula.

1. What sort of connective tissue are tendons composed of?

Tendons are dense connective tissue.

9. Remove a single muscle by cutting the tendons and peeling the muscle away from the bone.

1. What sort of muscle tissue is represented? How do you know?

Skeletal muscle tissue is represented, which is obvious due to the origin of the muscles and their connection to the bone sections via tendons and ligaments. The muscle fibers run parallel to the bones.

2. Nerves are generally thin, threadlike white strands found between the muscle and the

nearest bone. Look for the nerve in your specimen. Did you find them?

There are several small white strands within the muscle fibers, however it is hard to differentiate the nerves from the different small deposits of fat.

3. What is the physical difference in the tendon of the insertion when compared to the origin?

The origin seems to be a thicker tissue than the insertion. The origin is more stationary therefore I believe that the insertion has to be thinner in order to have the ability to stretch towards the origin.

10. Remove all remaining muscle to expose the bones of the chicken leg.

1. What is the soft material inside a bone?

The soft material inside a bone is called bone marrow.

2. Name three specific types of cells present here. Do not break the bone; it is sharp!

The cells inside the bone are osteocytes, osteoclasts and osteoblasts.

3. Name three functions of bone.

The functions of bone are to protect, blood cell production, support, shape and storing calcium.

11. Cut onto the hinge joint by cutting into the top of the covering of the joint from the femur side. It will become apparent that you must remove the knee cap area to expose the menisci and ligaments within. Pull up on the knee cap area and cut through it with the scissors. You will have cut through the bursa, a sac that acts as a shock absorber for the knee joint. These are found in every joint.

12. Pull the covering back and look into the inside of the joint. You will see more white bands of ligaments holding the bones together. Observe the shiny, white layer covering the ends of the bones is cartilage. It helps the bones slide smoothly when the leg bends.

13. Bend the specimen at Joint B (Figure 1) and rotate the femur in all directions. Remove the muscle that covers Joint B by cutting parallel to the femur, upward toward the backbone. Remove pink muscle tissue until you see a shiny white sheet of ligament that covers the joint. Present is an exterior ligament that holds the femur in the hip socket

1. What type of connective tissue composes the ligaments?

Ligaments are made up of collagen fiber bundles.

Figure 2 is provided in a separate document.

2. Label Figure 2 with the names of the joints you observed and the motion they make.

3. On Figure 2, sketch one muscle origin (the name of the bone indicates the insertion) and one muscle insertion you can see in the leg.

14. Dispose of materials as directed. Make sure to wash your hands, tools, and work station with plenty of soap and water.