My parents gave me a science kit as a Christmas gift one year when I was about 8 years old. It came with an experiment book, magnifying glass, microscope, test tubes, plenty of litmus paper and a dead frog crammed into a plastic container.
The frog was so dried out that its skin and organs had faded to the same dismal gray color, making it tough to tell exactly what was what. I was fascinated and repelled by that frog, and by the end of the year, I had sliced and diced his poor little, shriveled self so many ways that my dad eventually deemed the deceased amphibian “compost material” and gave him an honorary plot in our garden.
Later, some of my skills came in handy when I had to dissect a frog and a mouse in high school biology class. The three things I remember most? The stench of formaldehyde, one girl fainting and hitting her head on her desk and the class clown attempting to light his frog on fire.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) reports that more than 12 million creatures lose their lives for the purpose of classroom dissections in our country each year, including an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 cats (collected from both the U.S. and Mexico). Dissection supply is a lucrative business, and some large biological supply companies offer more than 70 animal species for dissection in their product catalogs.
Millions of frogs are removed from wetland habitats, piled into sacks and inhumanely killed by immersion in preservative for the purpose of classroom dissection. Frogs play a crucial role in wetland habitats, both as consumers of insects and as food for other species, and their dwindling populations are negatively effecting entire ecosystems. As a result, many students and teachers are beginning to question the educational value and ethics of using animals. In many cases, modern technology can teach students about the biology of living beings and to appreciate and the vital role that all animals play in the natural world.
According to AWI, a 2006 analysis of 39 published studies found that 19 of those studies revealed equivalent student learning outcomes between animal-based and humane alternative methods, and 14 studies yielded superior learning outcomes for alternatives. Only three studies reported more favorable outcomes for methods involving real animals.
Armed with this information, AWI has partnered with Digital Frog International and Save the Frogs! to provide a full Digital Frog 2.5 to the first 25 schools that pledge to discontinue animal dissections. Rancho Verde High School in Moreno Valley, California is the first school to enter the “Race to Stop Dissections” contest and accept AWI’s challenge to abandon frog dissections.
Although I understand the value of using use real animals in advanced, college-level biology classes and graduate school programs, more humane alternatives like Digital Frog 2.5 seem like a great solution for learning general high school biology.
Did you dissect animals in school? Have your kids? Do you support switching to a digital alternative?