When you dissect a mouse it takes less than an hour (as compared to the horse that takes 4 people a month to dissect)! When you cut through their skin, fascia covers the abdomen and you can see into it. In fact not only is the fascia transparent but the organs themselves are so tiny that you can look into and through them and see the kidney behind the intestines too! Wow!
I was looking for the jugular vein and thought I found it, but turned out I was looking at a muscle (sternomastoideus m.). An entire muscle! That means you have to have a really good imagination to be able to see the jugular. That also means that lab people that can cannulate (find/hit) the vein every time are on my amaziac list. But its a skill I'm willing to forego.
As for rats...do you realize that their testes are a 1/3 the size of a horses? A fucking HORSE'S? Okay, think about that. how many of me would fit into a horse. probably 5-10, weight wise. what about a rat? At least a thou. But it would only take 3 testes of a rat to fit into the space a horse's testicle takes up. DAMN! They're Friggin' Huge!!!! On the same token, the guinea pig's vesicular glands are huge, causing one of the highest volume/ejaculation:body size ratios around. Boars are next in line. Funny, I wonder if that's why they're called guinea "pigs".
3 comments:
What's the comparison between rat testes and human testes I wonder?
mice vs. horse testes comparison = AMAZIAC!
I like that word!
Wasn't I going to send you something a while ago? Ah yeah-- my friend Rae, who's a vet and works on gorillas and things! Ever get wid her?
thanks for looking at my blog! Is there some way for us to list each other's blogs as "faves?" I'm new to this..
mick
There's a book called The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond, that goes into some detail about the differences between humans and the other great apes. Aside from music, art, murder, and drug addiction, there's a great deal of info on the physiological differences.
Including an entire chapter on sex organs. So apparently male humans have disproportionately large penises, compared to other apes, but unusually small testes. The formation of pair bonds in humans is almost unique in the ape world (excepting baboons), and this may be why we have such small balls. Chimps, on the other hand, breed like crazy; a female chimp in heat will have sex with every male in her troupe in a matter of hours, so for a male chimp, VOLUME of ejaculate is very important. Have to wash out those other guy's swimmers.
There's a similar analysis of breast size, and some entertaining discussion as to why, exactly, humans have these unusual modifications. Check it out some time if you're into this sort of thing, you dirty person. The book won a Pulitzer.
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