Job Title
Company Director, Researcher and heavy lifter
How did you get involved with agriculture?
I did a degree in natural resources management and did lots of work experience in an agricultural setting.
My first permanent job out of university thrust me into sheep/grazing interactions in the Western District of NSW
Read more…Career Profile on Mr Vivi on the Careers in Australian Agriculture website – November 2012
Job Title
Company director, organ trader, chief cook and bottle washer, “the body parts lady”
Describe your job on the average day
Every day involves a little bit of processing stock, packing customer orders, sales and customer service, some blogging and marketing, some anatomy research, some supplier liaison and a fair amount of cleaning up. We also do anatomy and dissection workshops at education conferences and source and distribute good anatomy resources via the website, Facebook and Pinterest.
Read more… Career Profile on Miss Vivi on the Careers in Australian Agriculture website – November 2012
I heard this from a lab tech from northern NSW at ConQEST. She did such a good job with the small intestine in the science classes that now she’s asked to bring it into the hospitality classes as well.
She puts the specimen into an ice cream container and lets a little bit hang over the side. Then she gets the kids to gather around and guess at what it is. They can touch it at this stage but they can’t see what it looks like in the container.
After a while they get to see it all coiled up in the container and everyone gets around to working out that it’s a small intestine. Then they start to wonder how long it is. They’ve heard that these things can be metres long, so they are allowed to start extending it out.
They pull and they pull and they pull. Eventually they are all standing holding this thing and then the labbie gets the tape measure out. It’s around 6m long.
All the while these kids have been hearing about what the purpose of the small intestine is, where it fits in the jigsaw puzzle that is your abdominal cavity and what it connects to and so on. They are fascinated by the thing and asking lots of really good questions. Before they know it these kids can spout off all sorts of fun facts about their digestive system. Teaching by stealth – I love it!
The specimen is tough enough to handle this over and over again. You will store it quite happily in the fridge for years before you need a new one. If you’re willing to you can sacrifice a little bit and make a wet mount to be viewed under the microscope. Look out for the little ‘hairs’ along the edges – those are the remnants of all the circulatory system structures that bring oxygen to the small intestine and carry fluid away from it.
This is definitely a specimen that gives you a lot of bang for your buck.
We’ve gathered some new mammal dissection guides on Pinterest for you:
If you’ve found a good dissection guide that you’d like to share with others drop me a line with a link and I will be happy to post it there for you.
