Open House

Today was open house at the Vet School! If you have any interest in the veterinary profession, this is the time to come out and see what we're all about. All the club's set up demonstrations to help educate the public about what it is we do. 

The first place I had to drag my husband, obviously, was to the anatomy lab. The anatomy lab had radiographs up all along the walls, as well as dried specimens and bones, and some transverse sections. So it's a good way to show people some things without completely grossing them out. That's what the pathology section next door was for, anyway. My favorite display, of course, was the elephant section. There is a giant elephant front leg set up from the scapula down to the toes, and then they also had a femur and a skull. I've never seen an elephant skull up close like that before, so that was pretty cool. And it showed what I had read about, that an elephant's brain actually sits much lower in the skull than our's does. So where we have brain behind our forehead, behind an elephant's forehead is just soft tissue and blood.

An elephant's front leg. As you can see, it's taller than me, and I'm 5'7.

An elephant's skull, from the side and from the back

A radiograph of a snake who has ingested something he probably should have, and of a leopard gecko.



Then of course we hit up the pathology section in the old necropsy lab, where they had some diseased organs out on display. We skipped by the parasitology section, which had some microscopes set up to view parasite eggs and some boxes with live ticks, because I am just not a fan. My husband did correctly identify Ixodes scapularis as the tick that spreads lyme disease (he didn't know the actual name, but major points for visual recognition, since that's what's important!).

In the old necropsy room, they had a llama's liver, the stomach of a dog, and the intestines from a zebra. All my husband said of this part was that it smells, and he was disgusted that I was standing next to him eating potato chips. But honestly, I don't even notice it anymore. The liver from the llama was enlarged and had been invaded by a metastatic cancer, and so it had all these raised nodules all over it. The dog had some internal bleeding, and the stomach and intestines were practically black from coagulated blood. The zebra had a parasite problem with roundworms. So yeah, I guess if you weren't used to it I could see how that might be a little unsettling. To me it's just cool, especially when it's from slightly more exotic animals, like a zebra. And I say slightly because they are essentially horses.

Llama liver

Next we headed over to the hospital, where the majority of the displays were. Right as you walked into the hospital there was a demo of 2 horses painted, one with a skeleton and the other with the digestive tract of a horse. It's a great way to see the differences and similarities between our own bodies and theirs.

Showing the skeleton of a horse                                    

Showing the digestive tract of a horse

The ZEW club had out its boa constrictor and some guinea pigs to look at, but I think one of the highlights, at least for me, was the Iowa Tribe's Grew Snow Eagle House demonstration. They brought down a couple of their birds- a Red Tailed Hawk and a Golden Eagle. Their program takes in wounded birds and tries to release them back into the wild. The golden eagle had a broken wing, and would never be able to fly again. They always try to reset the bones, but I guess you can't really wrap a wing that well to keep it immobilized so the bones can heal properly.

I learned a lot about raptors today though. Like that a Red Tailed Hawk can fly up to 600 miles in a day, and that if you have a problem where a hawk is going after some of your animals and you somehow capture it and drive it 500 miles a way, that hawk can be back within the same day. And that they have two eyelids, one of which is transparent, so that they can close it while flying to keep their eye from drying out and to keep crap from getting in there. Same with their nose- they actually have a bone in their tongue that lets the cover up those nostrils from inside their mouth to keep their mouth from drying out. I also never realized that raptors could control each feather individually- that's a whole lot of muscle control- and they use that ability to express different emotions with their feather placement. And just like how a horse has the patellar locking mechanism to lock their legs, a raptor (not sure if all birds have this) have a similar tendon locking mechanism in their talons, so that when they grab a hold of something they can lock their talons around it. I believe the Red Tailed Hawk could grab and lock with something like 600 pounds per square inch, and the Golden Eagle could grab with 1500 pounds per square inch. So, lesson of the day- even through those thick leather gloves falconers wear, those raptors could squeeze through them if they wanted and completely crush your hand, and then lock their talons closed and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it.

Red Tailed Hawk

Golden Eagle

A couple of other demonstrations up that we didn't really spend too much time at were the anesthesiology demonstration and the teddy bear surgery. For the anesthesiology section, they hooked a teddy bear up to a ventilator so people could get an idea of how all of the machines work. And for teddy bear surgery, kids get to bring in their stuffed animals and then have them "fixed" surgically. Kids get to dress up in the surgery gowns and masks, and I think a little heart gets sown inside the teddy bear, and the teddy gets sown up and wrapped with vet wrap, all while demonstrating proper surgical procedure. It's a great way to show kids one of the cooler aspects of medicine.

The anesthesiology set up

All in all, it was a great way to spend a couple of hours and take a much-needed break from studying!