Chicken Dissection

In this lab we got to dissect a chicken. It was really fun... kinda gross... but really fun. We started out by making sure the chicken was clean and not going to give us salmonella and then we peeled the skin of the chickens breast to expose the pectoralis major and then to the pectoralis minor underneath. We noticed that the structure of the chickens muscles and location was very similar to humans, but as we saw in our owl pellet lab, there were clear differences in size and use, as chickens have wings to move around and we don't. For the rest of the chicken we repeated the process of: removing the skin, locating the muscle and sometimes messing around with moving the tendons and seeing the rest of the limb move.

This is a video of me rotating the humerus and causing the brachioradialis to rotate and flex the chickens arm... and saying hi to my friends... and laughing a lot. 

Our muscles are how we move our body. The muscles attach to the bones of our body via tendons, so when we flex or extend or limbs, the muscles pull the bones in the direction our brain says to, causing movement. The tendons are attached to two points on the bone, the origin and the insertion. The origin is the point that does not move, it anchors the muscle so that the insertion on a different bone can be pulled toward the origin point, causing the movement. In our legs, our rectus femoris is attached to the ilium of our pelvis and flexes our hip and thigh.

Chickens live very different lives than us humans so their muscles are slightly different than our own. These chickens specifically are bred to be eaten the the desirable pieces of meat are the breasts and the thighs so we notice that the pectoralis muscles are huge and down the entire torso while in humans they are relatively small, and the thighs are also very exaggerated. The trapezius in chickens and humans are different as well; in humans they are split into two parts while in chickens they stay an one bundle.

The semimembranosus extends the thigh.

These muscles everts and planter flexes the foot.

The rectus femoris flexes the thigh and hip.

The sartorius is responsible for leteral hip rotation.

The gluteus maximus is responsible for the extension and rotation of hip.

The gastrocnenmius plantar flexes the foot and flexes lower leg.

The biceps femoris flexes the lower leg.

The pectoralis minor helps the flexion of the arm.

The pectoralis major is responsible for the flexion, adduction and rotation of arm.

   

The flexor carpi ulnaris helps flex the wrist

The deltoid if responsible for the a(b/d)duction of the arm.

The brachioradialis is responsible for the rotation of the forearm. 

The biceps brachii are responsible for the flexion of the elbow. 

The triceps humeralis is responsible for the extension of the elbow.

The latissimus dorsi extends, adducts and rotates arm. 

The trapezius does many things, including extension of the head.