Perch Dissection

I got a dissection kit for my birthday and a perch to dissect. A perch is a vertebrate ray fish in the class Osteichthyes (which means bony fish). A few days ago, we observed the external anatomy of the fish. We measured it, but the ruler they gave us was too short. So, we used Merkin’s ruler. The perch measured 21cm long. We took some scales off and later we looked at them under the microscope. The growth rings on the scales showed that the fish was 8 to 10 years old. Wednesday we did an internal dissection of the fish. First we removed the operculum to expose the gills. Then we cut along the lateral line and up from the anus. Then we cut along the bottom and lifted the side off. We located the liver and then tried to find the gallbladder, but we couldn’t find it. Then we took out the gonads. When we removed the gonads, the spleen fell out with it. Then we removed the liver. The swim bladder was above the gonads. There was some weird liquid inside of it. After that, we looked at the heart and the intestines. Merkin then cut the tail and head off. We then cut the head in half and tried to look at the brain, but it was cut in two. Finally Merkin poked the eyeball and all of the ooey gooey liquid flowed out. Then I put the whole Perch back together and made a Frankenfish!
See ya later, Dude Boy