Comparative Mammalian Anatomy
BAA 289L
Course Head: Anne Weil (annew@duke.edu)
Teaching Assistant: Natalia Rybczynski
This site is a class project, authored by Duke University's Spring 2002 class in comparative mammalian anatomy. It provides an anatomical photo atlas, with description of dissections and additional information about adaptations and specializations, for the following animals: domestic cat (Felis catus); domestic rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus); domestic ferret (Mustela putorius); tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri); fox (Vulpes vulpes); and Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis). The students worked singly or in pairs, researching and writing their own dissectors as they went along. Undergraduates working singly were not required to write as many lab pages, and accordingly the cat and the rabbit, which are covered in many comparative anatomy texts, are not covered in as much detail here as are the more unusual animals.
Click here if you want to know where the animal cadavers came from.
The site is intended for people who are interested in comparative or veterinary anatomy and who are not easily disgusted by preserved tissue dissections. Before you look, please be aware that the comparative anatomical photos can be "icky".
Pages may take a few seconds to load, because they include multiple photographs.
Finally, we apologize if the presentation is less than perfect. This project was the first experience of hands-on dissection for many of the students (most of whom will go on to medical or veterinary school). The tree shrew and the bat are very small, and the bat was photographed through one eyepiece of a binocular microscope. This project was also the first adventure in Web design for the instructor, and the first experience with digital photography for most of us.
mammalian facial and masticatory muscles
mammalian body wall musculature
mammalian urinary and reproductive tracts
mammalian deep hip and tail musculature
Background free from EOS development